


Black Coffee

by TheLonelyHunter



Category: Newsies (1992)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Brooklyn, Eventual Romance, F/M, Organized Crime, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Spot Conlon is Bad at Feelings, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 27,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24954742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLonelyHunter/pseuds/TheLonelyHunter
Summary: 1906. Spot Conlon is working the Red Hook docks, rebuilding his reputation among the rowdiest laborers in the city. He's making progress, until one night he's ambushed. A junior reporter searching for an inside scoop discovers him badly injured and makes him an offer: information in exchange for a place to stay until he's ready for revenge. Will he accept her offer, or walk away?
Relationships: Spot Conlon/Original Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter One

Spot Conlon grinned as his fist cracked against the man's eye socket. The sound was glorious and filled him with a violent purple joy as it echoed down the alley and died in the late afternoon haze.

Long ago he'd learned and perfected the golden rule of a fight: hurt 'em where the whole world can see, and keep your injuries to yourself. It satisfied Spot that Vinny DeMarco was going to have a nasty black reminder of him for weeks. And then some.

"Get 'em up, Vinny! Give it to 'im!"

The handful of dockers watching from the alley's end were much louder than Spot liked. They shouted so recklessly he wondered silently if they were drunk already, swigging at the saloon while they waited for a ship desperate enough to hire them. Fuckin' simps, Spot thought to himself. Drunken rubes, they are, begging for the bulls to show up.

Vinny was slow today, and Spot quickly got in another jab at his torso. The man doubled-over and groaned, spittle flying from his lips onto the dark street. Half of the crowd hissed. Spot took in this noise, breathed it into his chest, and pulled from it a sick kind of energy. To show his appreciation for his audience, he gathered all his spit and launched it down the alley to a chorus of squalls.

Spot's verve was short-lived. Vinny recovered from the blow quicker than Spot expected and pulled himself upright. With an arm over his stomach and a grimace painted on his mouth, Vinny lunged toward where Spot stood. The dockers at alley's end inhaled sharply and Spot felt them watch him with more intent than before.

It was a show they were here for, cheerfully cheap. Spot had grown used to acting the antihero, and whichever drunk goop the hopeful champion. He didn't begrudge the men their fun; he couldn't, in fact, since he relished his own cheap entertainment. Their close attention roused him, and he side-stepped just in time for Vinny to careen headfirst into a stack of empty coffee crates.

Reluctant applause echoed down the alley. Spot watched Vinny and waited for him to rise. When Vinny didn't rise and instead stayed prone, Spot spit on the soles of his shoes and growled, "Looks like I won't be seeing you at the docks tonight."

Naturally, he didn't wait for a response. He pushed past the glaring spectators and stepped out of the alley onto the weary streets of Red Hook, Brooklyn.

* * *

As sundown neared, Spot sat at the saloon bar, flexing his bruised knuckles and downing a whiskey neat. For a moment he winced at the sharp pain in his hand but he soon grew used to it, even taking small pleasure in the sharp electric pains running through his fingers. He switched his glass to his injured hand, daring his body to rebel from the pain.

At the far end of the bar, three dayworkers lolled drunkenly upon their stools. They spoke amongst each other but between slurred words and near-weeping, none heard what the others were saying. It was the weeping that always made the bile rise in Spot's throat, so he finished the dregs of his whiskey and left the saloon for the docks.

At dusk, the company foreman selected his men. Though it was June, the night was blustery and Spot noted fewer men vying for night work today. As he waited for the foreman to nod in his direction the cargo hook hanging from his belt loop bounced restlessly against Spot's leg.

He had worked for this steamship company before. Spot recognized the foreman and hoped the foreman had recognized him, but the more men the foreman called up ahead of Spot, the more he felt the dark fist in the center of his chest tighten. It was small consolation to see that none of the selected men looked over their shoulders at him. It seemed he had taught them well—the memory of his glowing cigarette in the early morning hours as he waited for their shift to end kept them from gloating now.

Although the dockers' angst didn't guarantee him a job, he found that these moments on the docks returned to him the power he craved, albeit for a moment only. Daily he missed the respect he'd once had as leader of the Brooklyn Newsies. He missed watching them hustle to sell their papes by any means necessary. He missed the underhanded and vicious way they fought off territory poachers. Most of all, he missed the way they'd pick scratch off a fancy man and present it to him, Spot Conlon, as an offering, too scared or stupid to keep some for themselves.

All of it flashed through Spot's mind. As his chances at work for the night grew ever slimmer, the familiar dark fist slowly choked the breath from him.

Damn you and your bunk, Conlon, he said to himself. You need proof? Just look at the way the hair on their necks stand up as they scurry by. No, he was no longer Spot Conlon, King of Brooklyn and Errant Newsies, it was true. Would he ever be again? He shut off his mind before it could find an answer. What he knew for certain was that he wanted it back, wanted it with a fury born from hell.

But for now, the dockers' palpable unease would have to be enough.

A man, much older than Spot, passed too close on his way toward the foreman and whacked against Spot's shoulder. The man faltered and looked over his shoulder with an expression half confounded and annoyed. Spot took a step toward the man, his neck hot from too much thinking and a harsh sound rumbling in his chest.

As Spot tried to beat down the crushing rage that gripped his lungs, he happened to look beyond the man. The foreman, alerted by this sudden movement, looked Spot in the eye, paused, and finally nodded.


	2. Chapter Two

Louisa Palmer stood alone inside her childhood apartment on Fulton Street. She still knew the plaster cracks, the peeling wallpaper, the groan of the well-worn floors. She'd had fourteen years to memorize the meager details of her home as she grew from baby to child-woman, and though she had now been six years absent, not much seemed to have changed.

Like a patron in a museum, she moved carefully throughout the space. She noticed a new postcard here, a fresh afghan on the old rocking chair there. Nothing even nearing showy. Lou wasn't surprised; her mother had always insisted upon humility. She would have been horrified by even the glint of real silver. Humility, sure, Lou thought scornfully. What did that ever get her?

The brassy ring of a trolley bell reverberated through a cracked-open window. The sound made Lou's brain reel and she launched herself across the kitchen and into the front room to slam the window shut.

Once the trolley passed, Lou breathed deeply. She slowly drifted back into the kitchen where she sank into an old dining chair and laid her head on her arms upon the small cloth-covered table tucked into the corner of the kitchen.

For six years Lou had believed she was on her own. She had pressed on with life, thinking herself independent and determined, overlooking the living mother she held in a deep and intimate wrinkle of her brain. She had survived the years of family distance because of that wrinkle, and hated herself for never acknowledging it before today.

Now that the wrinkle had crumpled and she had nothing but the mere memory of her mother to hold, the real meaning of being on her own squeezed the breath from her chest.

The only thing that remained of her life as she remembered it was this narrow apartment. Lou pushed herself up from the table and wiped a stubborn tear from her cheek. When her stomach began to rumble, it was all the excuse she needed to get the hell out of there.

Lou slid the key into the lock. Down the hallway, a door opened and a shriveled brown face peered out from behind it.

Lou turned and started. "Oh." Gradually her eyes adjusted to the dim hallway light and she recognized the face. "Mrs. Glover, hello. How are you?"

The old woman frowned and said nothing, only stared. Lou hesitated, unsure if the old woman heard her. She made a move to leave, but Mrs. Glover coughed herself into reality.

"You Clara Palmer's daughter?"

Lou should have felt easier around the woman, her childhood neighbor, but the sharp way she looked at Lou made her neck prickle and tense.

"That's me," she said. "Louisa."

"Little Louisa, huh." Mrs. Glover coughed again and spittle flew from her mouth onto the dingy hallway floor. Lou stepped forward but wondered, for what? The old woman waved her back anyway and straightened herself. "Where's Clara been?"

An icy hand gripped Lou's chest. Suddenly the dim hallway was much too dim. Lou reached out for the wall to steady herself and hoped Mrs. Glover didn't notice. She took a long breath, then said, "She passed, Mrs. Glover. Last week."

The old woman's crooked hands pushed the door open as she moved further into the hallway. "Well now, that's a pity. Sure is. Clara was a good woman."

"I'm glad you're well, Mrs. Glover. I'm on my way to work—"

"I got a cousin that could use that apartment."

In a wink, Lou's defenses went up. The fog lifted and her brain sharpened and never had she been so grateful for a minor affront in her life.

Calmly she said to the old woman, "I'll be staying here for now. It was nice to see you, Mrs. Glover, but I really have to go."

Mrs. Glover's gaze followed Lou as she started down the hallway. As forcefully as her dusty lungs could muster, she called out, "Don't you forget about me, child. That cousin of mine could really use the place."

As soon as Lou stepped onto Fulton Street her stomach reminded her of its dues. At a nearby cafe, she ate eggs over-easy and two cups of bitter black coffee. The street had begun its morning bustle and for a time Lou stared out the window and lost herself in the circus of pedestrian life. Soon the waiter passed and Lou asked him the time. Sighing, she drank the dregs in her cup, laid a handful of coins on the table, and left.

Around her hummed a familiar and yet newly changed Brooklyn. Grocers and tailors Lou had frequented as a child were either aged beyond recognition or transformed completely. She turned onto Flatbush Avenue and joined the throngs heading towards the Brooklyn Bridge.

Two blocks down Lou heard a young voice shouting. She peered through the crowd and discovered a red-haired newsie waving a paper above the fray.

"Extra! Extra! Woman drowned in the East River! Dead woman downriver! Extra! Extra!"

He had a hell of a voice, Lou gave him that. As she neared she noticed his crooked, long-broken nose, and a thick scar down his forearm. Beside him stood a suited man, newspaper open in his hands. As Lou passed, the man turned and fell into step beside her, still focused on the newspaper he held. Curious, Lou scanned the paper over the man's shoulder and gasped when her eyes reached a headline near the bottom of the page.

"Hey!" she shouted back at the newsie. He didn't hear her or didn't care. She turned back, ran up to him, and ripped the paper from his outstretched hand. The newsie watched her rifle through her skirt pocket for a penny and shove a dime into his palm instead. The newsie ogled the dime, then raised his eyes to see Lou rushing down the street toward the streetcar station.

"Hey, thanks, lady!" he shouted after her.

She didn't hear him. She weaved between men and women, the old and the young as she raced to the streetcar station at the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. The streetcar moved along at its usual pace but today the bridge felt too long, and Lou had to put her hands firmly in her lap to keep her legs from fidgeting.

Once the streetcar stopped she darted between the throngs of morning passengers and walked as quickly as she could past the newspaper behemoths of the city: the World, the Tribune, the Times. Lou turned down Nassau Street and ran until she reached a brownstone building with an 'Office to Let' sign tacked outside.

The door flung shut behind her. The noise of it roused Archie, who was leaning back in his desk chair facing nowhere in particular. It was no surprise; Archie was always there. Lou had wondered, on occasion, if he slept there, but she never cared to ask and doubted he would tell her anyway. At the sound of the slamming door, he looked over his shoulder and turned leisurely in his chair.

"You're here early."

"Where's Sweeney?"

Archie shrugged and whirled away from her, turning back to the manuscript in his lap. Lou threw the newsie's paper at the back of his head. "Good god, Archie, aren't you concerned at all?"

Archie grumbled and rubbed the back of his head. "Concerned about what?" He lifted the newspaper Lou had thrown and squinted at the headline on the second page. "Concerned about Old Man Hearst taking over the joint? Hell, Lou, who the hell's got time to be concerned about this lousy operation?"

"I do," she said. "You should too. That buffoon is going to make a mockery of this place. There'll be no more real stories, just lies and sex and murder. The Metropolitan will be a lowbrow tabloid by the time he's done with us."

Casually, Archie said, "Perhaps. Or maybe he'll just put us out of our misery."

"Can it, Archie." Desperately she scanned the newsroom, empty but for her and Archie, awaiting the afternoon copy editors to arrive. "Where the hell is he?"

Archie nodded towards the door at the far end of the room. "With the big man himself. You can go tell them both how you feel if it breaks your heart so."

Lou stared at Sweeney's office door in silence. Archie put the manuscript down on his desk and sighed. "Hell, Lou, you can't blame Sweeney for taking the jitney. Hearst may be a rat but he's got the dough to back it up. This place is a goddamn wreck, and you know it."

Lou didn't reply. Archie shrugged and picked up the manuscript once more. The thick wooden door shut out whatever conversation was happening inside, so Lou went to her desk and fell into her chair. Unlike Archie's chaotic desktop, Lou's manuscripts sat in neat piles before her. She lifted a page to read but, try as she might, the words evaporated before her eyes and soon she found her attention back at Sweeney's door. Across the room, Archie chuckled.

"What the hell's so funny?" Lou asked.

"You've got smoke coming out of your pretty little ears."

Lou opened her mouth to retort with all the venom she could muster, but at that moment the door to Sweeney's office creaked open. Both Lou and Archie straightened in their chairs. Lou grabbed a stack of papers from her desk and lifted it to her face. She peered over them at Archie, whom she had never seen look so solemn.

The look on his face made her heart beat like a racehorse within her chest.

Sweeney came out first. He held the heavy door open, nodding all the while and keeping his attention on the figure just behind. Time froze in Lou's mind. Sweeney's simpering smile and muted voice made her stomach roil.

And then, donning his black wool fedora, William Randolph Hearst appeared. He stood taller than Lou expected, so much taller that Sweeney had to look up at the man as he spoke. His cold, watery eyes matched every picture Lou had ever seen, but looking at them made the soles of her feet go numb, so strange they were in the flesh.

There Sweeney stood, holding the door open for this strange, bird-like man. It was all Lou could do not to jump over her desk in a numb-footed rage.

As if he could sense it, Archie turned his head and looked into her eyes. Slowly, he shook his head.

Behind Hearst another man appeared, tall and thin and supremely uninteresting. The tall man said something Lou couldn't hear and Sweeney smiled, aglow with forced admiration. As Sweeney moved the men through the newsroom towards the door, he caught Lou's eye, then ushered the men along even more quickly.

Lou watched agape.

But Sweeney didn't move them fast enough. Hearst turned to hear what the tall thin man had said and as he moved, his anemic eyes seized upon Lou at her desk. She didn't know what to do, and she froze. Briefly, she glanced at Archie, but he could only stare at Hearst with wide eyes.

Sweeney and the thin man were still talking, moving towards the Metropolitan's front door. Hearst had stopped entirely. He stared at Lou, blatantly, entitled. Vulgar, Lou thought. He took his fedora from his head to get a better look.

"Well look at that. A colored girl," he said faintly. "Smitty!"

The thin man stopped and turned. Sweeney looked like he would choke.

"Would you look at that, Smitty. A colored girl working the newsroom."

Sweeney said nothing. Smith mumbled and nodded and fawned. Hearst didn't seem to care. He took a step towards Lou, put his finger atop the papers she held, and pushed them down onto the desk.

"I'll bet," he said, eyes glistening, "that you're one of those lady stunt reporters."

"You'd be wrong," Lou snapped.

Sweeney woke from his stupor and rushed forward. "She used to be. A stunt reporter, that is. Our Lou did top-notch work on unprescribed opium a year ago. Really got the readership up. Now she's our best junior reporter." She was grateful he didn't mention that she was their only junior reporter.

"A junior reporter," Hearst said, half-listening. "Well, isn't that something."

The presence of the men standing before her was suffocating. Lou wanted to glance at Archie again but she couldn't bring herself to look away from Hearst's face. Not yet.

As hot sweat began to drip down the small of her back Hearst turned abruptly away. "Well, Sweeney, it's a pleasure doing business with you."

Finally, the two men reached the door. Smith exited first and waited outside while Hearst leaned in and spoke discreetly into Sweeney's ear. Lou watched Sweeney gulp, then nod as Hearst and his companion finally left.

The door closed, Sweeney stared blankly across the newsroom. Lou and Archie sat at their desks, waiting. Then, suddenly, Sweeney trudged across the newsroom floor and into his office. The old door slammed behind him.

Archie and Lou glanced at each other, then surged from their desks. They rushed to Sweeney's door and jostled each other to be the first to knock.

"Sweeney," Archie hollered, too close to Lou's ear. "Come on, Sweeney, you can't stand us up like that!"

Together they grappled for space until Sweeney suddenly opened the door. Lou had expected him to be angry at the disruption, but his face was pale and drawn. He motioned them inside, Archie sneeringly gesturing for Lou to enter first.

Sweeney sat down and swiveled his chair to face the wall.

"So, Sweeney," Archie said. "What's the deal?"

Sweeney turned in his chair to face them. Moments ago, Lou had been ravenous to hear every word exchanged in this office. Seeing the look on Sweeney's face made her want to go back over the bridge to lunch with Mrs. Glover. Immediately.

Sweeney faced Archie. "You're off Sporting News for now."

"Off Sports? I'm a sports columnist, Sweeney. You can't be serious—"

"I said for now." Sweeney sighed. "He doesn't care about sports, unless they can create revenue for the paper. And we don't know that they do."

Archie began to object but Sweeney waved him off. "He wants you on National News. Just for now." When Archie didn't object and merely sank into his chair, Sweeney continued. "And Walter, the blotto, if he ever shows up he'll take care of Politics."

Sweeney grumbled and began rustling through papers on his desk.

"Mr. Sweeney," Lou said quietly. "What about me?"

"Louisa," he said. "Lou. You—"

In her head, Lou contemplated her plan. Should she search for a job at The World? Unlikely they would want her; Hearst and Pulitzer were cut from the same cloth. The Pettigrews, would they take her back? She'd forgotten how to properly polish silver and, most importantly, how to grovel, but maybe they wouldn't notice. She would have to remove the pale Slovak girl they had replaced her with. Or maybe they would recommend her to another family. Or maybe—

"—You're assigned to the Crime Report."

Lou stopped breathing. She felt Archie watching her.

"The Crime Report?" she croaked.

Sweeney nodded faintly. "Yes. And he was very specific about the first story. You're to look into the longshoremen's union. He says he received inside information they're cooking up some funny business over at the Red Hook docks."

Archie whistled between his teeth. "The dock workers, huh? Aren't they a rowdy bunch, Chief?"

Sweeney sighed and set his hands flat upon his desk. "I know it may not seem like it, but he likes you, Lou."

Lou scoffed. "He likes novelty. He doesn't like me. He wants to see me smashed like a bug."

"If you don't want to do it—"

"I'll do it," she said. "I'll show him a goddamn crime report." She pushed herself from the chair, Archie and Sweeney now looking up at her. "But Archie's coming with me."

Archie pressed his hand to his chest. "Help yourself," he said. "I've got my own articles to write. National news doesn't report itself."

Sweeney stood and walked around his desk. He lifted a startled Archie by the shirt collar and pushed him out the door behind Lou. "You'll go with her, so help me God," he growled into Archie's ear. Then he slammed his office door shut.

Archie shook his shoulders loose and sighed. "Well. At least you're not stuck with the Ladies' Page."

Lou opened desk drawers, pulling out pens and paper and other miscellany and shoving them into her satchel. "I'd rather flatter the ladies than write glorified propaganda for Mayor Hearst."

"Ouch."

She threw the satchel over her shoulder and said to Archie, "Be at the Red Hook docks at dawn."

"Where are you going?"

"To get a lead on my story. Where else?"


	3. Chapter Three

A steady breeze moved across the East River. Spot was grateful for it—the better half of a long night lay ahead and the lumber in the cargo hold sure as hell wasn't going to unload itself.

Tonight he worked on the pier. Bundled boards hoisted by heavy pulleys rose from the depths of the cargo hold over the deck and onto the pier where Spot and another man guided the merchandise onto horse-drawn carts.

A docker had to be vigilant with such cargo. In his early days on the docks, Spot had seen a man's face crushed when a load of steel beams went slack not ten feet from where he was stationed. As soon as the man's body was dragged away the work started anew. The gruesome pattern of bloody footsteps along the pier still loomed in his dreams.

If you could call them that.

Along the waterfront, brick storehouses loomed. Unfastened iron shutters transformed the windows into dark, rheumy eyes. In the nighttime hush horses whinnied, a familiar sound turned strange in the quiet. And the cart driver, waiting for the carts to fill, smoked one cigarette after another, tossing the endless butts into the cold water nearby.

Only once during the ten-hour shift did the men stop their lifting and pulling. All at once, they made their way down the wharf until it intersected Verona Street. There, two tired Polish women cooked a modest meal lit only by meager oil lantern light. They made no sign of recognition as the throng of men approached, cooking and serving with their heads down, speaking not at all to the men and only occasionally to each other, exclusively in Polish. Some men thanked them, others did not, and it didn't seem to matter; the women merely took the coins proffered and slid them into their deep skirt pockets.

Aluminum plate in hand, Spot sat at a slapdash table of wood planks atop cement blocks. Forks clanged upon plates, bottles of beer banged against the planks. Down the table, a glint of gold caught Spot's attention. His eyes shadowed by his cap, he waited until he saw the glint again, then turned.

Bernardo DeMarco sat with his head low, eating quietly. It was his gold tooth Spot had seen. As he ate Spot watched him out of the corner of his eye, but Benny paid no mind to anything but the food in front of him.

In a flash Spot's mind raced through every moment of the evening. Where the hell had he been? Not on the pier, that much Spot knew. In the cargo hold? On deck?

What fucking hole did he crawl out of?

The meal was quick and soon all the men shuffled back to the ship. Spot watched Benny board and climb down into the cargo hold.

The gold-capped tooth filled Spot's mind until morning broke.

As the last cart departed for the storehouse, Spot approached the foreman at the pier office. Cigar hanging from his lips, the foreman tipped his hat over his eyes. Spot slid his hand into his shirt pocket, cleared his throat, and handed his dues hidden beneath two cigarettes to the foreman.

For the first time since Spot could remember, the foreman looked at him from under his hat and smiled. It was a strange smile, subtle and coy. It didn't last long. The foreman grunted and turned back to the office shack to await the next clod with a jitney.

While the discharged men drifted east toward the Longshoremen's Rest or through the dark streets to the tenements deep within Brooklyn, Spot put his hands in his pockets and rambled down the wharf. All along the bay the storehouses stretched, a veritable brick wall surrounding the Brooklyn waterfront. At some time or other Spot had helped fill every one of these storehouses, with cotton or booze or grains or oil. And because he knew them so well, he knew their secrets.

He knew, for example, that the thirty-seventh storehouse down the bay had a faulty fourth-floor window.

Every night—or morning, depending on the shift—Spot climbed the metal ladder to the roof, reaching down with his cargo hook and pushing inward the last window on the right. Then he would grab the roof's edge and swing himself into the dark and dusty building.

He'd learned a few other secrets about Store 37 over the years. At times it sat entirely empty, but more often than not the first two floors were filled with filched goods the waterfront gangs considered too hot or inconvenient to carry off in a cart.

It all behooved Spot. The gangsters were reasonably keen and as such spent as little time in the abandoned storehouse as possible.

So while the other dockers moved away from the shore, Spot walked alongside, listening to the mellow waves crash against the bulkhead.

Later he would wonder if those same waves had hidden the footsteps.

From the shadow of Store 37 they emerged, Benny at the front and five others following. Spot halted and stared as they came closer, chuckling amongst themselves and putting on that they didn't notice him.

Until they wanted to.

"Nice night, eh, Conlon?" Benny said. His hands pushed deep into his pockets, he rocked forward on the balls of his feet. "Don't know I've worked a nicer night. I tell ya, I sure was glad old McNamara let me on last-minute like that."

The memory of the foreman's strange smile belted Spot in the chest. Behind Benny, the others grinned and tittered. Spot registered every change in their faces, every muscle tense. But he stayed silent.

"Vinny wanted me to tell ya he's doin' all right," said Benny. He moved gradually toward Spot. "'No hard feelings' was what he said." He stopped a foot from Spot's face. "Sometimes, Conlon, my dear brother and I don't agree."

Spot noticed something. In the space over Benny's shoulder, he could see a copper strolling down the wharf. Spot tried to keep his face neutral but all the same a slow smile spread over Benny's face.

"Don't you go getting any ideas," he said. "The bull's on our payroll today."

And, true to his word, the copper took one glance at the group of dockers and promptly turned down an alley between the storehouses.

Benny leaned closer and snarled, "Come on, Conlon, you're good at this, aren't ya? Give me what you gave Vinny and we'll call it for good."

Spot turned his gaze to the drab young man before him. He looked him in the eye.

Then he leaned forward and spit on Benny's shoes.

Benny lunged and Spot stepped out of the way. He spun on his heels and wrapped his arms around Spot's neck. Whiskey sour breath flooded Spot's nose and he began to choke from the smell and the growing pressure on his windpipe. With all the force he could muster, Spot thrust his elbow up into Benny's stomach.

Benny stepped back, gasping for breath. In the time it took Spot to fill his lungs again, he pulled his cargo hook from his pants and drove it into Benny's thigh.

The piercing scream bounced off the brick buildings and over the water. Spot relished the sound of it. True, the wound wasn't as visible to the world as a black eye, but Benny would be hobbling for weeks. He couldn't hide that.

The others rushed forward now, shouting as they ran. For a few moments Spot held them off, brandishing the cargo hook in front of him. Eventually, they circled around him, jabbing at random and hoping for a hit.

Sensing he had lost the upper hand, Spot threw the cargo hook over their heads and into the water. Only two of the goons were distracted by it. The remaining three knew his game and closed in.

The thrashing started sooner than Spot could process. In the ear, in the kidney, on the back of his knees. He felt himself slowly dropping to the street, though he struggled mightily to stay upright. Beyond, Benny lay on his back, moaning and holding his leg with bloodied hands.

Then Spot felt a sharp pressure in his shoulder and a throbbing, wet pain. He reached up to touch it and felt a similar twinge grip his thigh. The dark blood on his fingers as he took them away glimmered in the morning light. He closed his eyes for half a second and it was enough for the boneheads to push him fully to the ground.

A kick in the back of his head sent his hat flying. The dark veil of unconsciousness fanned out slowly over his eyes. He fought it, teeth gritted, unwilling to allow them the satisfaction. Death is better, murmured his subconscious. There's no pleasure in it once you're dead.

But he was tired, so very tired. And the darkness won.


	4. Chapter Four

"What's that?"

Lou and Archie ambled down the wharf. They had just left the pier, rejected for interviews by dozens of dockers coming off their shift. The first few men had listened cautiously to their appeal but as soon as they realized that Lou and Archie worked for the papers they shrugged them off and wandered away.

After that, few of the dockers would even look their way.

Lou followed Archie's finger to where it pointed further down the wharf. From a distance, it was hard to tell if the bodies crowded together were dockers or not. Something about the angular way they moved hinted at violent hysteria.

Lou turned to Archie. "Should we?"

He shrugged. "It'll make a good story."

Lou took a deep breath. "All right."

They looked at each other and nodded.

Then they ran.

"Oy!" Lou shouted at the teeming horde. "Hey!"

The men didn't hear, so absorbed were they in their pummeling. Archie bellowed, "Hey! Hey-o! The bulls are on their way!"

One man turned. Glee and a vague, paranoid fear shrouded his face. He nudged the man beside him and in moments, the two ran off down the wharf.

Lou and Archie advanced. As they drew nearer another of the bunch noticed their approach and broke away. It was then that Lou noticed a man she hadn't seen before, lying on his back just beyond the group, clutching his thigh and moaning. The man who broke away knelt down and lifted the wounded man to his feet. Together they straggled down a nearby alley.

Two upright figures remained. Though Lou and Archie shouted, the two maintained their alarming rhythm, legs moving violently back and forth. Lou reached into her bag, grabbed her notebook and threw it in the men's direction.

Scribbled pages flapped noisily in the wharf's breeze. Startled, the men stopped to regard the source of the strange sound. When they saw Lou and Archie bearing down on them, they split up and took off, one down the wharf and another down an alley.

Archie chased after the shadow in the alley. As Lou came upon the figure on the ground she dropped to her knees, ripping her skirt and skinning her legs.

The young man lay on his side. Blood covered his sun-lightened hair, a congealed a mass at the back of his head. For a moment Lou simply sat there looking down at the bruised body, too afraid of inflicting pain to touch any part of him.

Archie's threats echoing down the alley shook her from her stupor. She studied the young man's chest, assured he was still breathing. "Hello?" she said into his unconscious face.

She felt suddenly silly. "Can you hear me?"

Nothing.

Archie emerged from the alley's mouth and bounded to where Lou sat. Gasping for breath he said, "Haven't had to do that in a minute." He looked down at the young man and, still heaving, grew serious. "Is he dead?"

"We've got to get him to a hospital."

"How the hell are we going to do that?"

"We'll have to carry him."

"Great."

The young man coughed, spattering blood across the concrete.

"Shit," said Archie.

Lou looked up, eyes wide. "What if it's his lungs?"

The young man tried to move but the pain made him gasp.

"Come on, let's go," said Lou. "We've got to get him to help."

Archie sighed. Lou grabbed her dirtied notebook and together they heaved the young man upright and placed his arms over their shoulders. The young man moaned and soon passed out again from the pain. Lou and Archie dragged him down an alley until they reached the street and sunlight.

A few blocks down a cabbie sat in his hansom, reading a newspaper.

"Hey, you!" shouted Archie. "Open up!"

The cabbie lowered his newspaper. First, he looked at the young man dangling from their shoulders, then at Lou. He shook his head at Archie and grumbled, "I don't want no trouble," then resumed his reading.

Undeterred, Archie pulled them forward. He leaned into the cabbie's face, his own shoulder now bloody and warm, and he said, "Then shut up and get us the hell out of here."

The cabbie merely glowered.

"I'll make it worth your while."

Finally the man set aside his newspaper. Archie opened the cab door for Lou, then lifted the young man onto the seat beside her.

As the cabbie hooked up the horses Archie said, "Are you sure about this?"

"He has to go to the hospital—

The young man groaned once, twice.

"What're you saying, you grouser?" said Archie.

"Good God, Archie—"

"Hospital," the young man mumbled.

"We're on our way," said Lou. "As soon as—"

"No hospital," he wheezed.

"But you're injured," Lou said.

"Jesus, Lou," said Archie. "I think he knows that by now."

"Can it, Archie."

"No hospital."

Archie leaned back in the seat and sighed. "What the hell do we do now?"

Lou glanced out the window of the cab. Her heart still raced within her chest. Having hooked up the horses the cabbie came around to the window.

"Where to?" he grunted.

Archie said, "See here—"

"Fulton Street," Lou interrupted. "Bed-Stuy."

Archie frowned at her and she nodded. The cabbie glanced back and forth between the two of them, finally settling on Archie.

"What are you waiting for?" Lou snapped.

The cabbie turned to Archie, who shrugged. Muttering under his breath he left and climbed into his seat. As the horses started to move, the cab jolted badly and the young man moaned loudly.

"Hang on," Lou said. "We'll be there soon. You've got to hang on."

Outside the tenement, the cabbie reined in the horses. Archie climbed down to pay the cabbie, then helped Lou unload the exhausted young man onto the street.

"He's a louse," said Lou, glaring at the smug cabbie as the three of them hobbled toward the entrance.

Archie scoffed. "A louse? He's a goddamn thief. I had to give him an arm and a leg just to shut him up."

They did what they could to lift the young man above the endless tenement stairs, but inevitably they stumbled against balusters or banged against risers and the young man awoke only to gasp in pain and then pass out again.

When they reached the landing Archie took hold of the young man. Lou dug through her bag for the keys to the apartment while Mrs. Glover peered in silence from the crack of her door.

"Come on, come on," Lou urged. Immediately she shut the door behind them.

"Over there," she said, pointing to the small apartment bedroom. She helped Archie lay the young man upon the neatly made brass bed. Blood soaked through his pants and shirt, staining the quilt below.

Lou turned to Archie. "You'll have to call on Doctor Wilkins."

"I don't know where—"

"Three streets down and take a right. There's an old sign over the door. Look for the 'W'." She gripped his shoulders. "Hurry, Archie."

"We should—"

"Just go!"

Archie dropped his head and sighed. He left the bedroom and Lou listened for the front door to open, then close.

Then she sat on the old rocking chair, unmoving, and waited.

In the space of an hour, Archie returned with the doctor in tow. They knew little, so there was little to explain, and the doctor went right to work. Archie smoked on the fire escape as Lou, abashed, helped the doctor remove the young man's clothes to better see where the wounds began. She brought him a pan of boiling water and clean towels and, later, black coffee.

From the old rocking chair, she followed Doctor Wilkins' movements, entranced, as he gingerly poked and prodded and sewed the pale, gaping flesh back together.

She didn't turn when Archie sidled up, smelling of smoke. "Do you think he'll make it?" he said.

"He has to," Lou replied, still staring at the strange scene before her. "I've got to know what happened."


	5. Chapter Five

Spot tasted the pain first.

It was metallic, a sharp tang on his tongue that invaded the empty cavity of his mouth and crawled down his throat. As his lungs swelled with his first conscious breath, the tang pillaged them first.

And then the pain hit.

He opened his mouth to scream but agony stole the wind from his lungs and he gasped pathetically for air like a beached fish. Unconsciously he began to roll his body sideways, desperate for any kind of relief, but the movement wracked his bones and he gasped again.

For what felt like hours Spot lay staring at the ceiling and panting, careful not to take breaths too long or deep. In time his breathing normalized, and the sharp pains accompanying each breath became slightly less jarring.

"Your damsel has awoken, Lou."

Spot gritted his teeth and turned toward the voice. A man, suited and smarmy, sat in an old rocking chair a few feet away, reading a newspaper and sipping coffee from a chipped porcelain cup.

"Who the hell are you?" Spot growled.

At first, the man said nothing and continued reading. Then he neatly folded the newspaper, set it on the dresser, and stood. He took a final sip of his coffee and cast a glance at Spot.

"A mere figment of your imagination," he said. Spot snarled under his breath, but the man paid no mind and strolled out of the bedroom.

Spot waited for the man to come back. After a few minutes, his eyes grew tired and though he tried to stay alert, his body began to turn in on itself. Soon his muscles relaxed, pushing him further into the pillows behind his head. Then his eyes closed.

"You're awake."

His eyes snapped open at the sound of a new voice. He tried to sit up, instinct making him desperate to see whoever stood at the end of the bed, but pain pressed his shoulders into the mattress and held him tight. Grimacing, Spot listened as footsteps moved further into the room.

Whatever he had expected, it wasn't this. A young woman stood, hand upon her hip, looking as if she expected an answer to a question not asked. Her dark eyes melted into the warm brown of her skin, and a strand of her loosely tied hair fell over her angled cheeks. She glanced over his prone figure and frowned when she saw his shoulder.

"You've bled through the bandages."

He started to speak but his throat was so dry he could only cough. From the dresser she grabbed a pitcher of water and poured a glass, handing it to him. He reached for it but was overcome by the bruises all over his body. She noticed his grimace and moved close, bringing the glass to his lips. Once he finished drinking she set the glass on the table and opened a drawer, pulling out a roll of gauze and bandages. Then she turned and lifted an enamel pan of water from the dresser and set it on her lap.

"What's going on?" Spot croaked.

She talked as she moved. "That was Archie. Don't pay him any attention; it only encourages him." She looked into Spot's face, small wrinkles forming above her eyebrows. "I'm going to change your bandages." She paused. "It's going to hurt."

Spot noticed a sprinkling of pale freckles across her nose and cheeks. He shrugged at her warning and hissed through his teeth as a searing heat shot through his shoulder.

"I warned you," she muttered. "All right. Unbutton your shirt." A pause. "Please."

Spot looked down at the stiff white shirt he wore. Blood had indeed seeped through the tight bandage around his shoulder. It was so bright and red and strange against the starched white that he forgot what he was doing and simply stared at it.

"It's Archie's," she said, watching him watching himself. "He brought you some clothes since yours were...well, ruined." While he stared at his shoulder she had started unbuttoning the shirt, but he brushed her hands away and finished it himself. "You could always wear mine if you'd prefer."

It took him a moment to grasp what she'd said. He looked at her sharply. She smirked, then held out her hand. "I'm Louisa Palmer. Lou."

He considered her outstretched but didn't move. She pulled it back, a moment of hurt blooming on her face, then passing. Spot pulled the shirt down his shoulder, exposing the gory bandage. Gently, Lou reached for the loose end and began unwrapping it, peeling sticky sections away. He sucked through his teeth as the dried gore was stripped from his skin.

"Sorry," she said, her voice low. She paused for him to catch his breath, then began gingerly peeling again. "So tell me. Who are you?"

"What's it matter to you?" he muttered. His throat was still unused to talking and he started to cough again. She reached for the water glass but he waved her away.

"It matters," she said simply. Still, he said nothing. "Fine. If you won't talk to me, I'll talk to you." The bandage unwrapped, she took a clean towel and dipped it in the water and pressed it to his shoulder. "You were in a fight down at the docks of Sullivan & Sons "

"I know I was in a goddamn fight."

She pursed her lips and continued. "According to Doctor Wilkins you were beaten and stabbed in the shoulder and the thigh. The injury on your leg is a flesh wound, but Doctor Wilkins had to sew a tendon in your shoulder back together."

"What the hell does that mean?"

She tilted her head and shrugged. "I'm no doctor, but I imagine you probably won't be able to move it like you used to."

She gave him time to process this before she pressed the wet towel to his shoulder again. "See?" she said, touching the stitched wound. "The knife went deep here."

He turned his head to look at the wound. Exposed it felt especially tender, beads of blood seeping between the stitches. He felt as if he were looking at someone else's body, someone else's pain. He tried to raise his arm, as if to prove it wasn't real. A strangled howl escaped his lips as flaming arrows shot through his chest.

"Water," he said, panting.

She passed the glass to him and waited for his breathing to slow. "There's more," she said quietly. "You've been unconscious for two days, and you have a mild concussion and three broken ribs."

The fresh bandage chafed the skin on his shoulder. She pulled back the quilt to replace the bandage on his thigh and he was so tired that he said and did nothing to help or hinder.

"If you're wondering where you are, you're in Bed-Stuy, in my mother's apartment." She cut herself short and went still for a moment, then shook her head. "Well, it's mine now. From what I can tell, it looks like you'll be staying here for a while." She looked at him pointedly. "Unless you'd rather go to the hospital."

He turned away from her gaze. Under her breath she chuckled and finished wrapping the clean bandage around his leg. As she removed her hand Spot was surprised to realize that he immediately missed its warmth.

"Oh," she said as she was about to stand. "I almost forgot; I found something of yours."

From her skirt pocket she pulled the brass check the foreman had given him at the end of the shift and she tossed it onto the quilt. She stood and gathered the bloodied bandages. As she reached the bedroom doorway Spot blurted out, "Wait a minute."

She stopped and he swallowed hard before speaking. "What am I supposed to do with a bum shoulder?"

She paused. Her mouth tightened and she finally said, "Doctor Wilkins will come later. I don't know. I'm sorry."

And just like that, she was gone.

Once again, Spot found himself alone in a strange room, staring at a brown stain on the ceiling and fighting the awful urge to weep. Through the walls he heard pots and plates clanging and he closed his eyes, dreading her return, desperate to remain alone.

Never before had a whiskey been more necessary, and more unlikely. A drunken sleep would be infinitely better than this living hell.


	6. Chapter Six

Doctor Wilkins arrived a minute shy of the hour; perfectly on time, as usual. Lou sat in the living room at the cheap Underwood typewriter Sweeney had loaned her when he heard about her peculiar guest. The clack of the keys was so loud that she nearly missed the doctor's quiet knocks.

As the doctor stepped inside Lou took his jacket and hat. "Has he been eating?" he asked.

"Not much, from what I can tell. He doesn't seem to be interested in much more than sleeping." She showed the doctor to the bedroom and, sure enough, the young man lay asleep, or—as Lou suspected—pretending to be.

The doctor approached the young man with a serene tenderness that brought a knot to Lou's throat. He lowered himself into the rocking chair beside the bed. Lou left him there, then returned with a fresh pan of water and clean towels. The doctor thanked her, then nodded for her to leave.

So she did. Reluctantly.

Back at the typewriter, Lou tried to concentrate. She had only written a few sentences for tomorrow's edition of the crime report, even though she had spent hours staring at the mostly blank page before her. Sighing, she stood and went to her mother's bookcase. From the top shelf, she grabbed a book, uninterested in the title, and pretended to read while she listened in on the voices in the next room.

After an hour the doctor emerged. Lou had given up on eavesdropping shortly after she had started when she realized the doctor's voice was as gentle as his manners. She was startled when she saw appear, so soundlessly he had gathered his things, that when she stood to meet him she knocked her chair over.

"He's healing rather well, I would say," said Doctor Wilkins as he reached to straighten the chair behind her. "Though he is rather recalcitrant."

"Sounds right," Lou muttered. "And his shoulder?"

"Mmm," murmured the doctor. "He did ask me about it. We've done what we can. There's nothing to do now but see how it heals. Surprises can happen."

"In your professional opinion?"

The doctor turned his full gaze on Lou and she suddenly regretted asking. "In my professional opinion, one should prepare for the worst and be pleasantly surprised by anything else."

Lou asked the doctor a few more questions, then thanked him for his time. He dismissed her offer of coffee, insisting he had important work waiting at his office. As she held the door open he handed her a roll of fresh bandages and told her to call on him anytime.

"Day or night," he said, lowering his glasses down the bridge of his nose.

"Day or night," she echoed.

Then he left. With the doctor gone, the apartment felt strangely deserted. Lou looked around, feeling yet again like a stranger in her own home. Then she went to the kitchen and assembled a modest meal. As she sat down to eat the slightly stale piece of bread and jam, she glanced toward the bedroom door. Sighing, she gathered the cup and plate in her hands and stood.

The doctor had left him upright, propped up by pillows. As she entered the room she noticed him staring at a hole in the wallpaper, and when he noticed her, he redoubled his focus on it.

"Well, Spot Conlon, it looks like you're on the up and up." He whirled his head in her direction. She sat in the rocking chair nearby. "How do I know your name?" Lou asked. "The good doctor told me." She crossed her arms and leaned back. "That wasn't so hard now, was it?"

"What do you want?"

"Here," she said, taking the plate from her lap and placing it on the quilt before him. "You must be starving."

She waited for him to eat but he merely stared at the plate, so she stood and began rustling about the room, neatening the contents of drawers and dusting worn surfaces with her hands. From the corner of her eye, she saw him pick up the bread and take a bite. Still moving about, she asked, "So tell me, why won't you go to the hospital?"

For a few moments, she thought he wouldn't answer. Then he said, "You see a copper around when you showed up that morning?"

Lou stopped moving. "I don't think so. The only people I saw were…well, you know."

Spot made a grunting noise at the back of his throat. "He was there, no way he coulda left."

"What in the world does a cop have to do with going to the hospital?"

"It's got everything to do with it," he said, his voice sharp. "That copper was on the take. If you'd brought me to hospital and he found me there I'd be back in the Tombs quicker than you can snap your pretty little fingers."

Lou sat down in the rocking chair and leaned forward. "The Tombs? What about The Tombs?"

He tightened his lips, the muscles in his neck tense. "You got your answer."

"Barely."

But he wouldn't budge. Lou glared at him and stood. She walked to the lone window in the room and pulled open the curtains. Late afternoon sunlight streamed across the bedroom. Spot cursed loudly and tried to cover his eyes with his arms, groaning at the brightness.

"You'd better be careful with your shoulder," she said casually, "or you'll injure it more."

"Close the goddamn window and I will."

Lou hummed. "They say sunshine can cure just about anything, even a sour temper. Should we find out?"

"Close it."

She didn't. She ambled over to the bed and removed the now-empty plate. Then she sat in the rocking chair, rigid and suddenly serious.

"I have a proposition for you."

Whether he was squinting from the sunshine or narrowing his eyes in fury, she couldn't tell. Lou took a deep breath through her nose and blurted out, "I want you to tell me about the longshoremen's union."

He glowered. "I don't snitch. Not for nothing."

"Is that so? You might consider it, seeing how you can't work right now. If you tell me about the unions you can stay here as long as you need to. No rent, nothing. And I'll pay you, more than you made at the docks."

His voice churlish, he said, "You're gonna pay me?"

"Listen," she snapped, an angry heat bubbling from her chest and out of her mouth. "I may be colored and I may be a girl but I've worked my entire life. I've got money. Enough to pay you."

He fell deeper into his sulk. Lou felt herself waver between indignation and compassion to see him so tormented.

"Now you tell me," he said finally, his tone more subdued than she'd expected. "What is it you want to know about our measly union? What's in it for you?"

"I'm writing an article."

"Oh, yeah? Who for?"

"The Metropolitan Magazine."

It started with a smile that reached across his face, then a rumbling within him. It was the first time she had heard him laugh, ever, and even though it was meant to be cruel, she shivered from the satisfying timbre of it.

"What's so funny?" she demanded.

He stopped laughing, and she immediately missed it. "That you work for that old rag," he said, smirking. "And that you think the unions belong in the papes. They're about as criminal as your good doctor."

Lou observed him. Then she said in a low voice, "I was given a tip—on good authority I'll have you know—that the unions are filching merchandise off the docks."

His smirk widened. "Tell me—Lou, is it?—who's this 'good authority?'"

Her voice faltered, but she pushed through the cracks. "It happens to be William Randolph Hearst."

"Well, there you have it."

"What?"

"Your 'source' is as criminal as your gullibility. It'd be cute if it weren't so rotten."

Lou frowned, then leaned in close to him, so close she could smell the sea and the cigarette smoke still in his hair. "Tell me about it, then. Be my source."

His eyes raked over her face and she felt surprisingly vulnerable under his gaze. She bit her lip and leaned back in the rocking chair, crossing her arms. "If all I have to go on is crooked information, how can you and the rest of the dockers get justice?"

He snorted. "Justice. Mighty big word for such a little girl."

Lou held back a snarl. She gritted her teeth and spit out, "Will you help me or not?"

For a moment they stared at each other across the narrow bedroom. The slanting afternoon light cut sharp shadows across his lean cheeks and made the clear light of his eyes glimmer. For a moment Lou forgot what had been said. Then she heard him say, "I told you; I don't snitch."

The loss of something more than a source gripped her chest. She took in a deep breath and held it, then stood.

"Fine. I've got to drop off an article for the copywriters. I trust you'll behave yourself."

As she walked down Fulton toward the streetcar station, an evening breeze blew across her neck. Startled, she put her fingers to her nape and felt a simmering heat under her skin.

She paused, shook her head, and walked on. She didn't want that heat to get her thinking.


	7. Chapter Seven

You got somewhere to be, boy? 'Course not. Bad luck you were at the Billy Goat tonight, bad luck. Probably been like that since you were born, eh? Poor old me, you tell yourself, I'm just a victim of rotten fate. That's why I sleep on the streets, why I can't feed my own sorry mouth. That's why these coppers snap me up like candy.

Let me tell you something: this is just the beginning—you've got a lifetime of bad luck ahead.

Big Bill Devery spat the words like they were bullets. A waste, because Spot's mind was already numb by the time Big Bill's meaty hands hauled him up the wide stone steps of The Tombs. Pulled between the hulking Egyptian columns to the prison's main entrance he felt like a fly, thrust about by winds beyond his control, beyond his comprehension.

Had he felt that way before The Tombs? He couldn't recall. It seemed to him there had always been a headline he could fabricate, a scab he could soak, that would give him a sense of control.

After The Tombs, Spot had felt the winds often. By the time he was released he was too old to hawk papes, and too polluted. The Brooklyn Newsboys Lodging House had no place for him. The vicious winds blew him about the city, searching for a livelihood, for an anchor, until he resigned himself to the docks.

But the winds were not satisfied even then, and they took to deciding whether he would be chosen at the shape-up each day or not.

The Tombs? What about The Tombs?

You got your answer.

Barely.

In mere minutes he had been booked. Fingerprints, dates, facts, all blurring together on a smudged piece of paper. Lies, mostly. They assumed he couldn't read, street rat that he was, but he read every lie they put to paper. One of the few benefits of being a newsie.

It didn't matter, though. He was in, and there wasn't any getting out until their say-so. He wasn't surprised to see them move so quickly, that being booked in a detention center was more like buying a ticket to a fair than a criminal condemnation.

After all, it wasn't justice they wanted; it was a diversion.

They shuffled him down narrow stairs to a basement where water trickled from the walls of damp cells and masons worked every day under dim lanterns to fill the gaping cracks in the sinking foundation.

You and your buddies will make a good headline tomorrow, Devery had spat in his ear. We're cleaning the city up good, see? Cleaning up the rabble. Good riddance to you.

Bad luck made good headlines; Spot knew that better than anyone. And it had been Spot's bad luck to be at the Billy Goat that night, though the cards had been good to his pockets. It was bad luck that by the time the coppers showed up Spot and the others had been too drunk to elude them. Mostly it was bad luck that New York was run by crooked Boss Croker, who liked to use his own working-class customers as fodder for his newspaper associates' insatiable appetites for scandal.

Never mind that in his upper-class establishments the rich bet and lost enough money to feed the city for a year.

So Spot had appeared in the papes a second time. But now it was his mugshot, among others, that was plastered across the front page of the Journal and the World, demanding illegal gambling houses be shut down before they corrupted the city.

A joke, surely. It was much too late for that.

I have a proposition for you.

I was almost too delicious, too disgustingly cheery to believe for a moment that one acerbic newspaper article could curb the gangs looming over the docks, and maybe knock Hearst down a few pegs too. The thought of it made his heart swell. But Spot wasn't an optimist, never had been and never would be. Lou seemed like a smart broad, but what did she know of the power structures at hand?

He considered her brown skin and thought, Well, she might know something.

But it was too risky, and the chance for failure was too high. No docker in his right mind would talk to her or anybody else about the tributes they paid, about the times they looked steadily in the other direction. Who could say she wasn't in cahoots with the gangs herself, hoping to root out dissenters?

Spot reached for the water glass on the table and groaned as the stitches pulled at his tender skin. He looked down at the black threads on his still bare shoulder.

A victim of rotten fate.

Maybe he was. But did he have to be?

He wondered.

He made his move in the dark of night.

First, he made small movements with his extremities, flexing, and feeling for where the pain began and ended across his body. His shoulder was a loss, that much he knew, but his other arm was functional, bruises and all.

Spot tried to lean forward, but the stabbing pain from his broken ribs made him stop cold. He breathed shallowly for a minute, barely moving, until the pain subsided. Then he gritted his teeth, bracing for the pain this time, and with muscles he didn't recognize he moved his body to the edge of the mattress.

Gently, he swung his legs off the bed. His injured thigh smarted as the stitches pulled across his skin. What surprised him most of all was the thick, dull pain of the bruises at the base of his back. He couldn't see them himself, but he imagined the hard welts made by boots across his skin. He tried to push himself up to stand, but even his grit couldn't overcome his body's exhaustion and he fell back onto the bed and bit his lip so as not to cry out.

He didn't give up. Again he stood, this time holding onto the dresser as he paused to breathe through the hurt of his bones. After a few minutes of careful listening, he hobbled to the bedroom door that hung open and led to more darkness. Clutching the door frame, he looked out into the dark apartment he had only imagined.

It was neater, sparser than he expected. Though wallpaper peeled in corners, there was surprisingly little to see in the room. A chair here, bookshelf there, stool in the corner. Better for him; less to trip on.

To his left, he noticed the apartment's front door. It wasn't far, a few steps and he would reach it.

Get going, he said. You're almost free.

A noise stopped him. He'd been so desperate to escape that he hadn't noticed the soft lamplight in the far corner of the kitchen. Neither had he noticed the table, nor the figure that huddled over it.

But he saw her now, her head in her hands. And he heard the muffled sobs that slid between her fingers, and the creak of the chair as her shoulders shook.

He stepped forward. For a moment he forgot about the wound in his leg and, startled, his foot fell awkwardly, thudding against the floor.

Lou whipped around to face him, her eyes large.

"What are you doing?"

Tear streaks ran down her face. She didn't move to wipe them away. Spot pondered a lie but he was too tired, so he shrugged and said simply, "Leaving."

Lou stared at him as if he were speaking in a foreign language. He hated the silence. Her wet eyes shone so brightly even in the dark that he couldn't look away. "You all right?" he said.

Finally, she remembered the tears and brushed her fingers across her cheeks. She said nothing to him but frowned, pushing her chair back and standing. Then she went to a cupboard, pulled out a dusty bottle of whiskey and poured it into the coffee cup on the table.

She downed the drink in one gulp. "Would you like some?"

"Yeah," he said, the word spoken instinctually, without thought or intention.

So she poured the whiskey again and pushed the cup across the table toward him. He didn't move, he couldn't, his brain now fighting against him, unwilling to cause itself more pain. She noticed. She went to him, seamlessly hoisting his good arm over her shoulder and supporting his body as he hobbled to the empty chair at the table.

The whiskey went down smooth. He closed his eyes in honor of it, savoring the burn as it warmed his throat, then his chest.

"So you're leaving," she said, voice flat.

He shrugged and reached for the whiskey bottle to pour himself another. She watched him carefully, her tears dried. "Where will you go?"

"Wherever the hell I want."

"Yeah, sure. You're not trapped here, you know."

The whiskey heat moved from his chest to his head. Vaguely he noticed that his shoulder didn't hurt as much, not much at all, in fact.

"Oh yeah? I don't remember asking to come here."

She rolled her eyes. They were quiet a moment. Spot passed the coffee cup back to her.

Feeling loose, he asked, "So are you gonna ask me if I'll help you?"

She narrowed her eyes and spoke slowly. "Are you?"

"Can't say. Haven't decided yet."

"But you're leaving." She shook her head as he shrugged. "Just tell me something," she said, leaning forward onto the table. "Doesn't it bother you that men like Hearst can play this city like some kind of sick game? Don't you get tired of it?"

Spot grabbed the whiskey bottle and took a swig from it. "It drives me fucking crazy. But you don't know the half of it. There's a hell of a lot more at stake here than Hearst and his fucking goons."

"I'm finding that out," she said. "That's why I want to know about it. I want to do something."

"You can't," Spot barked, surprised by his own reaction. "Nobody can. You think he hasn't done this shit before? You think some poor sap like you hasn't tried to bring the Hearsts of the world down already?" Another swig of whiskey. "You think he's gonna let you go on with your pretty little life once he finds out what you're up to?"

Her shoulders were rigid. He thought of pouring her another drink to loosen her up, but she took the bottle from him and held it tight.

"You want to know what I think?" she said, her voice acrid and cold. "I think―I know―I've got nothing to lose." She stood and took her own long swig from the bottle. "I don't care what you do. If you won't help me I'll just go back to the docks, day after day, until someone else does. I'll get my story, one way or another."

She shoved the whiskey back into the cupboard. As she moved she said, "If you're going to leave, for the love of God wait until morning. You'll kill yourself going down the stairs."

Spot watched her as she left the kitchen and walked into the living room beyond.

"Hey," he hollered, stuck in the chair. "A little help here."

"Help yourself."

His scowl faded into thoughtfulness as he glanced at the front door.

Not drunk enough, he thought. He held back whimpers as he stumbled back into the bedroom and fell onto the brass bed.


	8. Chapter Eight

Archie caught Lou by the arm as she stepped into the Met office the next morning. He'd already had far too much coffee and smoked far too many cigarettes and his eyes galloped about as if they couldn't decide quite where to land.

"I'm starving," he growled as he began pulling her along Nassau Street. "Let's go to Sloane's."

Lou dug her heels into the sidewalk and tried to pull her arm away. "I can't, Archie. I've got work to do."

"Now's not the time for that, my dear," he said over his shoulder. "Can't you see I'm wasting away? Don't be cruel."

Lou sighed and let him pull her on. She was hungry, having left the apartment at dawn to avoid seeing —or rather, not seeing—Spot. As she had gathered her things to leave she noticed the bedroom door was closed. She told herself that if he was there or not it didn't matter; he could do whatever he wanted, like he said. She wasn't holding him prisoner.

Was she?

But as she locked the apartment door her stomach had begun to roil, and it hadn't stopped. Not as she walked down Fulton, not as she boarded the streetcar. It hadn't stopped even as she passed a bakery full of the scent of fresh bread.

Even now she felt queasy. As Lou allowed Archie to drag her along she silently hoped that an hour or two of Archie's banter would do the trick and distract her from… thinking.

They sat at a corner table. The diner was half full. Filtered morning sunlight illuminated endless dust motes against the dark wood paneling of the restaurant. "So," Archie said between mouthfuls of egg and coffee, "how's the captive doing? Has he spilled the beans yet?"

Lou winced at the word 'captive' and stared down at her plate. Archie had ordered food for her too, but she couldn't bring herself to eat. She piled the eggs into a small mountain, razed them, and built them up again. "No beans," she grumbled. "He's a tough nut to crack."

Archie clucked at her egg pile. Then he reached over, took her plate, and poured them eggs onto his own. Lou didn't object. Between mouthfuls, he said, "Doesn't surprise me much. Those dockers tend to keep everything close to the chest." He wiped his mouth and leaned back in the chair. "What're you going to do if he doesn't crack?"

Lou groaned and put her head in her hands. "I don't know, Archie, I don't know. I'll try to find someone else, I suppose. But did you see how they all looked at us when we went to the docks that day?"

"They didn't look at us."

"Exactly."

"Hm. I see your point." He took a long gulp from his coffee as Lou fidgeted with the napkin in her lap. "I don't suppose I ought to tell you that Hearst stopped by the office this morning."

Lou straightened. "Already? This early?"

"Sure," he said with a wave of his hand. "I don't suppose the man sleeps. He's got his fingers in far too many pies."

"What did he want?"

"Hard to say, but after the big man left Sweeney came out asking for you. He wanted to see you the 'second she steps foot in the building.' I figured I ought to get to you first." Archie leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Hearst seems awfully keen on that story, Lou."

"I'll bet he is." She pursed her lips and lowered her voice. "It seems he's feeding me bad information."

Archie cocked his head and dropped his knife onto the floor. "No kidding," he said. "That rat. And your pal's got the scoop?"

"He seems to think so."

"Well, then." He crossed his arms, raised his eyebrows. "I sure as hell hope he's there when you get back."

"I know," Lou muttered. "I do too."

By the time Lou and Archie arrived at the office, Sweeney had left. Throughout what remained of the morning, then the afternoon, Lou waited for him to return, casting her eyes every few minutes to the front door.

Just before lunch, she glanced again. As she turned back to her work, Reginald, an afternoon copywriter, caught her eye.

He had always been brutish towards her. Lou had learned from Archie nearly a year ago that Reginald had desperately wanted the Junior Reporter position at the Met, and his ego had been severely bruised when Sweeney had given it to her. She was about to ignore his scowl, but something in her chest broke open and she stood.

"What do you want, Reginald?" she said, far too loudly, across the newsroom.

Archie, of course, didn't turn. He probably hadn't heard a word. The rest of the copywriters did, however, their eyes wide, glancing between her and the man beside them.

Reginald glowered and glared, then lowered his eyes to the paper and pen in front of him.

Lou had to bite her lip to keep from smiling.

The lunch hour came and went and Sweeney didn't return. Lou kept to her work but by mid-afternoon, the train on her chest pressed so deep that she gathered her things and said goodbye to Archie.

As she sat in the streetcar once again, her fingers began to go numb and her heart started to race. She willed herself not to think of the apartment, of the bedroom door, or whatever might or might not be behind it when she arrived.

The streetcar arrived in Brooklyn without delay. As she walked down Fulton, her legs shook. And when she saw a suited man outside her tenement, her breath caught in her throat.

It was Smith, or Smitty, as she had heard Hearst call him. From afar she hadn't recognized his face, but when he turned and smirked at her she placed him immediately. Back straightened, chin held high, she walked up to him and stopped short of his chest.

"May I help you?"

He had clearly been waiting for her, but he pretended to be startled at her approach. "Oh, yes. Excuse me, Miss—?"

Lou scowled and said again, "May I help you?"

The man's smile widened. He held out his hand, his pale fingers dry. "Yes, of course. My name is Walter Smith. I work with Mr. Hearst."

"I know."

For a moment, his smile faltered. "Ah, I see. Well. Mr. Hearst wanted me to ask you about your progress on the article." He leaned toward her. "The article regarding the longshoreman's union."

Lou narrowed her eyes. "Is that so?"

"Yes," he said, the smile slipping back onto his lips. "And?"

"It's coming along."

The man's eyes widened, waiting for more. When it was clear Lou had nothing more to say, he shuffled his feet. "Well," he said. "I'll surely let Mr. Hearst know. Good day." He turned to walk away, then stopped. "Silly me, I almost forgot. Mr. Hearst wanted me to give you this."

He held out a folded piece of paper. Lou hesitated, then took it. "Mr. Hearst recommends you contact this man if your sources run dry." Smith winked. "He has more if you need them."

Mr. Smith waited for Lou to thank him. She didn't.

"Well," he said, tipping his hat to her. "Goodbye then, Miss—"

"Goodbye," Lou said sharply. Only when the man had climbed into a nearby hansom cab did she finally breathe.

The hansom cab gone, Lou raced up the stairs of the tenement.

What's wrong with you? she thought, her legs tiring. Stop worrying. The article is just a distraction. Hearst will forget about you soon enough.

She reached the landing in a haze. She turned and startled to see Mrs. Glover waiting at the apartment door.

"Miss Louisa," Mrs. Glover said, her gnarled arms crossed over her chest. "What are you doing with that white man in there?"

Lou steadied herself on the stair railing."Mrs. Glover, er, good afternoon."

"You heard me. What are you doing with that man in there?"

Lou glanced at the apartment door. "Excuse me, Mrs. Glover? That must have been Archie, he works at the Met with me—"

"Not him," Mrs. Glover drawled. "I saw you two coming up here with a banged-up white man between you and I want to know what you're doing with him in there." The old woman uncrossed her arms and lowered her voice. "You're gonna bring trouble on us all, you are."

"I'm not making any trouble, Mrs. Glover, I promise." She was horrified to find no excuse to offer. "It really must've been Archie you saw yesterday. He's got a bad knee, you know; I had to help him up the stairs."

Mrs. Glover narrowed her eyes and waited. Lou wiggled her fingers at her side, willing the feeling back into them. Mrs. Glover sucked in her puckered lips and, without another word, hobbled over to her apartment and slammed the door shut.

Lou exhaled. She reached for her keys and opened the apartment door. Safely on the other side she closed her eyes and pressed her back against the door. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes, choking on the air halfway into her lungs.

Spot Conlon sat at the kitchen table, his uninjured leg propped up on a chair.

"Nice of you to finally show up," he said, crossing his arms over his chest. "So, when do we start?"


	9. Chapter Nine

He wasn't expecting this.

He watched the door open with the satisfaction of holding the upper hand; watched as she stumbled into the apartment and slammed the door shut behind her. He watched as she inhaled like there wasn't enough oxygen in the world, and watched as she opened her eyes.

He had expected begrudging gratitude. Instead, he watched her heave at the sight of him, dark eyes wide.

In a choked voice, she said, "You're still here."

"Sure looks that way," he said. The way she stared at him made him unsure how to respond, how to react. Fuck, I'm losing my touch, he told himself. And it's only been a few days.

She pushed herself off the door and stepped haltingly towards him. He frowned as she drew near. The seeping loneliness he'd suppressed all day retreated and his mouth slipped open as she bent down and wrapped her arms around him.

When was the last time someone had touched him outside of a fight? He couldn't remember. Sure, there'd been cold Brooklyn nights where he'd sought warm, soft company, but as he was drawn further into the tenebrous world of the docks he had no time for distractions. Or no interest. He'd never cared to decide which was the truth.

She was warm, her arms around him. He felt himself pulled into the moment, noticing every minute detail of her: the scent of violets clinging to her hair, the way her skin shone like gold in the slanting afternoon sunlight, the way her warm breath felt against his neck.

He had taught himself to avoid closeness over the years. While a good fuck or a fight used to quiet his mind, the touch of a hand on his cheek had always sent his heart racing. And not in any way that he wanted.

So he tried to pull away from her, but he was a cripple trapped on a chair and there was nowhere for him to go.

"What are you doing," he said, coldly.

The pressure of her arms didn't let up. "Thank you," she murmured, so quiet he almost didn't hear it.

He let her hold him for a moment more. Then he finally said, "All right, all right."

The spell was broken, though the smell of violets remained. Again he tried to shrug her off and hissed at the pain in his shoulder. She pulled back, brow furrowed.

"Did your mother never hug you?"

"As a matter of fact, she didn't. So get off."

"No wonder," she grumbled as she let go and took a step back. She took her bag from over her shoulder and threw it in a corner, then walked into the living room. From the kitchen, Spot watched her open drawers and gather notebooks and pencils. She came back to the kitchen and pulled the chair out from under Spot's leg. Though it was his uninjured leg, when his foot fell to the floor he hollered.

Lou, meanwhile, waved off his curses and sat down in the chair opposite him. "We start now."

Outside the living room window, the sun grew dimmer, more golden. She wanted to start from the beginning, where he was born, how he had lived.

"Why the hell do you need to know all that?"

"Context. Readers will want to know."

He grunted. "Keep 'em wanting. I ain't giving my whole sob story."

She eyed him, then shrugged and settled further into the seat. "Fine, suit yourself. Then let's start with this: How'd you end up at the docks?"

"It was a job."

"Listen," she said, leaning over the notebook on her lap, "this isn't going to work if you're going to be so blasted stubborn. You agreed to this, didn't you?"

"Yeah, and I'm regretting it already."

"I guess you'll just have to make the best of it." She sighed. "If you won't talk about your life, why don't you just tell me what you know about the unions."

That he could do.

About the unions, there wasn't really much to tell. "Sure, there's a union," he said. "In name only. It's just a couple of guys who've been beaten up so bad and so much that they don't do much about anything anymore. The gangs run the docks, have been since I showed up, anyway."

Lou frowned as she listened. Spot smirked at her naivety, but she was so busy scribbling that she didn't seem to notice. "What do you mean, exactly, run the docks?"

Spot sighed, impatient. "I mean, the gangs hire the foremen. The foremen hire the dockers. And the only dockers who get hired for the ship are the ones who can pay to work."

Lou stopped writing and looked at him. "Sounds pretty neat for the foremen."

"Sure, it is," said Spot. "That's why they do it. Can't beat kickbacks from both sides."

"And if the dockers can't pay?"

"Then they don't work."

Slowly she said, "So you paid them too."

"You bet I did," he scoffed. "How the hell else was I gonna eat?"

She nodded absently. Something squeezed in Spot's chest as he watched her bite her lip.

"How about that whiskey?" he said abruptly.

Lou glanced at the cupboard, then stood and took out the half-empty bottle. Across the narrow counter, she reached for a glass.

"Don't bother."

So she shrugged and handed the bottle to Spot. He took a long swig. The warm rush of the alcohol in his stomach calmed him and he leaned back.

"While you're at it," he said, the bottle still clutched in his hand, "you might as well tell those readers of yours about the stolen merchandise."

Her head snapped back up. "Where?"

"Store 37. Along the waterfront." His voice grew uneven. "Right near where you found me."

She looked out the window as she thought. Her brown eyes darted across the view beyond, then turned back to Spot. "What's the connection between the gangs and Hearst?"

He shrugged. "I've only heard rumblings."

"Tell me."

Spot gripped the neck of the whiskey bottle so hard he wondered momentarily if it would break. Then he took a deep breath. "When a rat like Hearst makes to run for office, the gangs get worried. Think he'll sic the bulls on 'em to make an example. You following?"

She nodded. He swigged.

"All right. So to keep Hearst off their backs they send along some 'tributes'."

"Like what?"

"Like stolen booze. Tobacco. Whatever the hell else they get their hands on that comes through the docks."

"Money."

"'Course."

Lou took the bottle from his hand and took a slug. "He's pretty good, Mr. Hearst," she said.

"The best. Behind only Pulitzer himself." Spot turned his eyes to her full on. "You're gonna have to dig deep to confirm it, you know."

"I know," she murmured. "Deeper than I've ever dug before."

"You up to it?"

For a moment she was silent, then a small smile slid over her mouth. "Sure. I'm a born reporter, aren't I?" She stood abruptly and held out her hand to him. "All right," she said, gesturing for him to stand. "Come on."

"What are you going on about?"

She put her hand on her hip. "You're going to have to use your leg sometime. The doctor said the wound wasn't all that deep, and it's been stitched up for three days now."

Spot scowled. "I ain't going nowhere."

But he knew he had to do it. He'd told his side of the story now, and anything that remained for him to do existed outside this cramped apartment. If he didn't get up, go out, the ride was over. He couldn't go back to working the docks with a bum shoulder. Hearst would fire Lou and the story would die. And, most importantly, Spot would have nowhere to stay—he sure as hell couldn't get to the fourth floor of Store 37 on his own. Contingency plans riffled through his brain. None stuck.

When Lou saw he wouldn't respond, she sighed and lowered herself to his height. Spot recoiled, still mute, as she lifted his good arm over her shoulder.

"Ready?" she said.

Before he could reply she stood and lifted them both. It hurt, of course, and he groaned at the sharp pain in his thigh. Lou waited until he was quiet. "Are you okay?"

"Of course I'm not fucking okay."

"Take a step."

"Are you deaf? No."

She shrugged his arm further up her shoulder. "Do you want to sit around here for the rest of your life?"

"Yes, I fucking do."

She cackled and he frowned at her. "Come on. I'll be gentle, I promise."

Glaring at nothing and everything, he took a reluctant step. "This is the shits."

"It wouldn't be so bad if you'd just stop complaining," she said as she moved forward with him.

"Yeah?" he sneered. "Tell me this—how the hell do you plan on getting me down those stairs?"

"Don't you worry. I have tricks up my sleeve too, you know."

He wagered that she did. She was growing harder for him to predict, and it was driving him nuts.

They lurched around the apartment together. In time his leg grew used to the sharp pain in his thigh and his steps moved more freely. Around the kitchen, into the living room, and back. She was stronger than he gave her credit for, holding him up as he hobbled on his one good leg. And thee smell of her hair—pomade or not, he didn't think violets would ever smell the same to him again.

I guess you'll just have to make the best of it.

Once the pain had gone, he did. He soaked up her low laugh when he crushed her against the wall, the way her hand squeezed his waist when he lost his balance. The way her cheeks flushed in the early summer heat of a too-small apartment.

Distracted, he stumbled. Lou's arm gripped his waist and she put her hand on his chest to steady him. They both went impossibly still, Spot choking on the groan of pain in his throat.

"That's enough," she said quietly. "Come on."

Slowly, they made their way from the kitchen to the bedroom. She helped him sit on the brass bed and swing his legs onto the quilt.

"Are you feeling alright?" she asked as she sat down in the rocking chair.

"No," he said, honestly.

"It'll get better," she said. "You'll be back on your feet in no time."

Spot stared out the sliver of window uncovered by the curtains. He felt her watching him and turned to face her.

"What?"

She hesitated, then answered. "We're going to the docks tomorrow."

Fire under his skin. "Like hell we are. I'm not going back there like this."

She met his eyes. "We have to. Hearst is bullying for this article. I'll drag it out as long as I can as a cover, but I have to get the real story in the meantime. If we wait too long he'll fire me and send in one of his puppets to rat out the unions. The truth will never come out."

"Don't you get it?" he said, more tired after a meager jaunt than he ever remembered feeling before. "I'm a walking billboard for why they shouldn't talk to you."

"They'll talk," she said, rising out of the chair. "We'll make them."

He watched her leave and close the bedroom door. Then he let his head fall back onto the pillow, and all the groans he had held in for two hours came spilling out.


	10. Chapter Ten

Standing cheek to jowl, their three hands gripping the windowsill, Spot and Lou leaned out the apartment window and looked down the towering fire escape.

In the angled morning light, she watched his face move through emotions—surprise, anger, and finally, a touch of fear—and she wondered if he would back out of their deal, fresh as it was.

A resigned sigh caught in her throat. We've only just gotten started.

"You've gotta be kidding," he said, still staring down the maw of metal steps.

"I'm afraid not."

"Like hell," he snarled, pulling back into the apartment and pointing at the apartment's front door. "There's stairs right there. Normal stairs. What about them?"

Lou pulled her head back in. "Quiet down, will you? We can't use those stairs. Mrs. Glover's been watching us, and if she finds out you're staying here she'll sic the whole tenement on us. Besides," she said, raising an eyebrow, "I figured you'd rather have less of an audience with that leg of yours."

He gritted his teeth and stared down at his leg, then slowly raised his glowering eyes at her once more. So, she'd been right. Lou watched his face carefully, searching for a sign in the way he blinked, in the twitch at the corner of his mouth.

She looked on with bated breath as he cast his eyes to the open window.

When he bent down and hoisted his good leg through the open window, she choked on her breath. She was so stunned that when he tried to raise his injured leg through, she could only stand by like a beached fish, mouth agape, and watch as he grimaced and grunted.

And when he said, standing outside the window, "Are you coming, or what?" she finally noticed she had been grasping the old rocking chair so tightly that she nearly fell backward into it.

Stepping gingerly over children and cats, they descended—Spot first, then Lou. Faded clothes drying on knotted lines bubbled beneath the alley's humid breeze into their faces. Lou's knuckles were white and hard against her skin as she gripped the railing, and with each graze of shirtwaist against her neck, her heart caromed against her lungs like a frightened moth.

To quiet her jangled nerves she had, at first, focused her eyes on her moving feet. But that gave way to staring at the fire escape steps, then peering through the grated metal, and after two stories she had found herself frozen and breathing hard, one foot hovering in the air.

"What's the holdup," she heard Spot call back. "I'm the gimp here, remember?"

But she couldn't move, not even her trembling lips.

She felt the wobbling of the fire escape quiet, then begin to rattle again as Spot hauled himself back up the narrow steps. Between floating sheets, she spied his face, paler now from being stuck in the apartment for days on end. But his sharp blue eyes shot through the wafting fabric and Lou fixated on them, the only things around that didn't move.

"This ain't so bad, you know," he said to her, frown softening. "You oughta see the holes the foremen stick us in; that shit'll make you puke."

Still, Lou didn't move. She was keenly aware of him watching her, the expression on his face changing ever so slightly as he guessed at what she was silently thinking. He took one more step toward her, then with a jerk of his head gestured down the fire escape.

"Here's what you do," he said, leaning conspiratorially toward her as if anyone else could hear their conversation. "You mark the guy in front of you, see? Don't look at nothing else. You do that and you'll be down before you know it."

He started down the stairs again but before he took a single step he looked over his shoulder and under his breath added, "But do me a favor: try not to fall in love, would ya? It'll cramp my style."

Relieved exasperation forced the breath back into her lungs. "That won't be a problem, I'm sure," she muttered, and followed.

And as they descended, floor by floor, she watched that place at the back of his neck, pale and tender and usually so hidden from view. Soon she became aware of his arms, the sinew that kept him moving down the stairs now, and had lifted and pulled who knew what kind of cargo over the years.

In the end, he was right—she didn't realize when they reached the street. He startled her by jumping down from the last landing onto the pavement below, careful to land mostly on his good leg. But he startled her more when he reached his arms up to where she stood, her fingers still bloodless and gripping the railing.

He nodded at the ground. "You've made it this far," he said. "So come on."

With nothing in her head but the sound of the alley's breeze, Lou leaned forward and put her hands on his shoulders as he grasped her waist. It took only a moment—just long enough for her to catch the cigar smoke lingering on his hair—for him to hoist her from the landing and set her beside him on the ground. And when his hands released her she longed to wrest them back.

But he didn't know, couldn't know. Instead, he looked away from her and out onto the street and rested his back against the brick wall of the tenement.

"Now what?"

She shook her head, hoping he hadn't noticed her hitched breath. "Now," she said after a moment, "we go to Red Hook."

They stepped off the streetcar and made their way down a sidestreet until they reached the docks.

"Stay here," Spot said, gesturing to the wharf running along the shore. For a moment she watched him walk down the bay, then hurried to catch up to him.

He didn't turn when she reached him. "Pretty sure I told you to stay back."

"I'm coming with. I have to."

"No, you don't. And you're not gonna."

The bulk of Lou's skirt made it hard for her to keep pace. Between annoyed breaths, she blurted out, "Why not?"

"Why not? Because no one's gonna talk to me if you're lurking around."

"Lurking?" she said. "Who's lurking? Just tell them I'm your girl. They won't pay any attention to me."

Stopping short, he laughed; the sound of it poured out like bubbles. "Like hell, they won't. You already tried this, remember? You're gonna stick out like a sore thumb."

"There's colored dockers all over the place. How could I stick out?"

He shook his head and started walking again. She could see how he concentrated to make his limp disappear.

"It ain't that," he said, his voice low. "It's that face of yours."

"My face?"

"Yeah, your face. You can bet they won't forget it." Then he said, quieter, "It ain't an easy face to forget."

"Then what do you propose?"

"Just leave it to me. All right?"

Lou's legs burned from trying to keep up, so she stopped and watched him move on. "Fine," she groaned. "Fine. But you've got to get me a source, you hear?"

"Sure," he said vaguely. "Stay here, all right?"

Lou sighed and turned to look out over the water.

"Hey," she heard Spot call down the wharf. She threw up her hands. "What do you want?"

He pointed to the piers running perpendicular to the wharf. "Don't go down there, all right?"

She frowned, waiting for an explanation.

"You hear me?" he shouted.

"Fine, boss man," she shouted back. She walked over to a nearby storehouse and pressed her back against it. "Happy now?"

Even from a distance, his smirk irritated her. "That's it, kid. Perfect."

How long did she wait for him on the wharf, leaning against the brick that grew ever hotter beneath the June sun? Lou couldn't begin to tell. The minutes melted, one into another, and she found herself endlessly pacing the wharf, her breath catching at the sight of each docker that passed by.

She peered, again, down the wharf, to the saloon where she was sure Spot had gone. Nothing to see, just like the dozens of times she had checked already. Down a nearby pier, dockers unloaded a ship carrying mountains of bunches of bananas. Their shouts and brutish banter drew her attention and no matter many times she tried to push it out of her mind, she couldn't help but be drawn back to the muscles and the fruit and the way it all blurred together like a painting.

"What's wrong with you?"

Lou's head jerked up in time to see Spot ambling toward her. "Nothing. You sure took your sweet time."

"All good things to those who wait, ain't it?" he said with a stupid smile. He was drunk, she was sure, but she said nothing, deciding she preferred it to his arguing.

"Well?" she prodded.

He shrugged and looked down the pier, searching for something. "Well, what?"

"Stop playing around." Lou stood and dusted off her skirt. "Did you get a source or not?"

From Archie's pant pocket, Spot pulled out a cigarette she didn't know he'd had, then a match that he lit on the corner of the concrete steps where Lou had sat. "No dice," he grumbled, the cigarette slipping around on his lips. "You know, I don't know where you get these great ideas of yours."

"You didn't get anything?" The tightness that had been building in her chest all morning began to break. Stinging tears sprang up just behind her eyes, and she blinked hard to keep them there.

Spot glanced at her, then looked away again.

"Sure, I didn't get much." He exhaled a neat puff of smoke and plucked the cigarette from his lips. "But I've got ideas too, and it's time we do what I say."

Lou reached up to wipe a wandering tear from her cheek. Spot pretended not to see and offered his good elbow to her. "Get us outta here, would ya? My leg's killing me. Besides, we got places to go tonight."

Tired as she was, Lou didn't say anything. She hooked her arm through his and they walked together down the wharf, neither of them quite sure who carried the other.


	11. Chapter Eleven

"Where are we?"

Spot shrugged off the question, though in the dark she couldn't have seen. He gave her credit, though—she didn't ask again.

They had entered McGlory's through a long and narrow entrance painted coal black. As they moved down the hallway, the doors to the street behind them opened and closed like an eyelid. Shadowy bodies rushed past, leaving drunken giggles and slurred-gravel mumbling in their wake. In the dark Spot reached for Lou's hand and pulled her ahead.

"What is it?" she said sharply.

"This ain't a walk in the park, you know."

He could nearly hear her scowl in the dark.

Finally, the hallway opened up into the barroom. Across the grime-covered floor, tables and chairs were scattered and tipped, some with broken legs or split tops. Spot moved through the maze of it, steering them away from the dark entrance and growing crowds.

"Are my pockets safe now?" Lou asked, sour.

"It ain't your pockets I'm worried about, kid," Spot said, scanning the bar and the dance hall beyond. Already the band had started playing, already they had drunk their pay. The trumpeter teetered dangerously on the back of his heels, while the drummer leaned his forehead against the hoop of the snare, his sticks still drumming a rhythm in a drunken sleep.

"Look." Lou nodded to the dark hallway they'd just exited and Spot turned to where she was pointing. The Captain of the Precinct sauntered out of the shadows. Hidden behind his wan and humorless face, Spot saw the hint of a grin. Lou muttered, "Do you think he'll shut it down?"

Spot smirked. "Just you wait."

And, sure enough, barely had the captain approached the bar but a red-haired woman grasped his arm, whispered in his ear, and pulled him onto the dance floor.

"Huh."

"That's how it works, kid. Write that shit down, why don't you."

From the corner of his eye, Spot watched her take in the rowdy place. He tried to see it through her eyes, this strange vignette of hidden society—the shabby curtains obscuring box seats rarely used for their intended purpose; men and women of all shapes and colors and means laughing and drinking and dancing.

"So, what are we doing here?"

He rolled his eyes. "What do you think? We're getting you those sources you're so set on."

"And how are we going to do that?" Lou said, staring at the captain as he waltzed across the dance hall floor while murmuring into the giggling red-haired woman's ear.

Spot nodded at the far end of the bar. A bevy of women gathered in the dim light, leaning on the bar's edge. The gaudy ornament of their dresses drew attention away from the fraying hems and hasty make-up. They were relaxed, all of them, throwing back drinks and lifting each other's skirts and laughing like they'd never done it before.

Lou followed Spot's eyes as he said, "You're gonna go talk to 'em."

She watched the group, head tilted and eyes narrowed. "Them? What could they possibly do?"

"Look around, kid. This place is crawling with dockers. And those girls? They're the reason half the goons in here show up. You following?"

"Of course, I'm not a complete fool. But what does it have to do with—"

"Can it for a second so I can explain." He sighed. "Wives just want a steady paycheck. They want their men to sit pretty with the gangs, to get picked at the shape-up. So they figure, a little cut here and there ain't so bad. He would drink it away at the saloon anyway, or—"

"Spend it on them," Lou said, still staring down the bar.

"Bingo."

"So—"

"So, you go over there and tell them that if their customers talk to you and this article gets the gangs sorted, there may be a bit more change in their hose down the road."

Slowly, Lou's lips moved into a smile. "Well, aren't you clever."

"That's what they tell me."

Lou untangled her arm from Spot's. With a smirk, she said, "Don't wait up."

Spot watched as she made her way over to the bar and hollered at the bartender, who lazily pretended to polish glasses. He sauntered over, leaned forward just so, and nodded when Lou slid two dollar bills across the damp bartop. From beneath the dark of the bar he pulled a full bottle of whiskey and handed it to her. Without looking back, Lou turned toward the group.

One of the women, with dark painted eyebrows and the smile of a tiger, looked up. She noticed Lou first, then peered beyond as if she could sense someone watching. Her eyes caught Spot's and when he nodded slowly to her, she nodded back.

Good ol' Lizzie—sharp as always.

Spot lifted an overturned chair and sat. He leaned back and let the music roll over him, clunky and sloppy as it was. No one came to McGlory's for the music anyway—the place itself was the entertainment. A place to be yourself no matter how low, to drink and carouse, to be frightened and fearless all at once, to be alive. From the bankers to the dockers to the whores, that's all any of the guests longed for. To live.

"Conlon!"

As he turned, Spot jostled his slung shoulder and sucked air through his teeth at the searing pain. Joe Starkey ambled across the dance hall, grinning and drunk. Spot's back straightened, prickles running along his spine, and he felt his lips go tight as Starkey neared.

"Long time no see, Conlon," Starkey said, slapping a hand across Spot's rigid back. He sat and ran his eyes up and down Spot. "Nice rags."

"Gotta take what you can get," Spot growled.

"Sure do." Starkey's usual dopey grin was magnified by the booze, but his eyes were red and weary as he gestured to where Lou gathered with the girls, who had gladly taken the whiskey bottle and now passed it around between laughing fits. "Say, where are your manners? Ain't you gonna introduce me to the new bird?"

Heat flushed Spot's neck and when he spoke his words were clipped. "You got a lot of fucking nerve coming over here, Starkey." He angled himself in front of the man and said, "If you ain't here to apologize you can get the hell out of my face."

"Jesus." Starkey put up his hands. "What the hell are you so hot about? I just wanted to know about your girl—"

"You louse," Spot spat. "You didn't give a shit about her earlier, so what the fuck do you want with her now?"

Starkey's eyes tried to focus and his smile faltered. "What—she's the broad with the pape?"

"You're a real moron, you know that?"

Starkey sat still for a minute, mouth slightly agape, staring at the girls down the bar. Even beneath the drunkenness and confusion Spot could see the outline of the jolly facade Starkey worked so hard to maintain. He was the entertainment on the docks, and he relished his duty. All throughout the shift men threw insults at Starkey, some cunning and some cruel, and waited to see when he would finally break.

But he never did. Insults to his height, his mother, and his dick size were met with sloppy grins and a laugh. In the end, Starkey had gotten what he'd wanted out of his eternal good cheer—all the dockers liked his company. They had no reason not to.

Abruptly, Starkey turned back to Spot. "Shit."

"So, are you gonna change your mind?"

Starkey's face tightened. Spot understood he was torn. Torn between helping his only close friend at the docks and the possibility of being a rat everyone despised. Spot had long ago given up his pride in exchange for survival, but Starkey had worked toward a different survival entirely. His merry ways had carved out a place in the cold and indifferent world his father had created, and Spot knew that to give it up would have to mean something.

While Starkey sat silent, Spot's insides roiled. The whole scheme was a fool's errand at best. But he had promised to help Lou, and the look on her face when he had told her about the gang's dock operations had fallen somewhere between horrified awe and vivid inspiration.

It was a good look on her. He had realized in that moment that he had spent far too much time in the twisted world of the docks, that life existed outside the confines of hand to mouth and the stink of fish guts and bird shit.

Fool's errand or not, Lou was paying him. A job was a job was a job.

Starkey pursed his lips, then shook his head slowly. "I can't do it, Conlon. The boys would—shit, I ain't drunk enough to go spilling my guts, not even to a pretty face."

"You're a coward, Starkey."

Starkey shrugged. "Maybe. But at least I still got a job."

"Oh yeah?" Spot said, starting to get up from the chair and remembering his injured shoulder when it smarted. He gripped the table with his good hand and glared at his friend. "Well if you ain't gonna help then get the hell outta here."

Starkey, too used to insults on his person and too drunk to think clearly, stared at Spot with his mouth hanging open like a carp, trying to decide whether he was serious or not.

Irritated and sober, Spot struck. "Not drunk enough to talk, but too drunk to defend yourself, huh? Get the fuck outta here. I got nothing more to say to you."

Spot watched Starkey's eyes move higher. A hand pressed into Spot's shoulder and he heard, "Cat got your tongue? You heard the man. Beat it, Joe."

Starkey's mouth twisted from confusion to annoyance and then went slack. "Didn't know you were still on Conlon's payroll, Lizzie."

"What's it to you? Shoo, fly."

For a moment, the three of them waited in air gone still. Spot watched Starkey, Starkey watched Lizzie.

"Conlon," Starkey started to say, his eyes gone soft. Lizzie whistled through her teeth and Starkey turned to her, frowning.

"Neither of youse know how to have a good time," he slurred, standing. "I ain't gonna let you ruin mine."

Off Starkey went. He stumbled and then righted himself, taking a moment before he lumbered down the middle of the dance floor, bodies pressing against him until he was gone from sight.

Lizzie, meanwhile, had pulled out the chair next to Spot and sat. From her bosom she drew a cigarette and a match, striking it against the table and lighting the cigarette as if Starkey had never existed in the first place.

"Haven't seen you around the place in a minute," she said, blowing smoke into his face.

"Yeah, well."

"Yeah, well." She smirked and rested her wrist on the table, the cigarette smoke creating a white cloud at the burning end. "That's all you've got to say to your old pal?"

Spot shrugged and settled his shoulder so it wouldn't pain him anymore. "Is that what we are?"

Lizzie inhaled a puff and blew it out in a perfect ring. "You kept me from starving; I'd say we're more than just pals."

Spot turned toward the dance floor and groaned, "Fucking hell—"

Lizzie reached out and touched his arm. Gently, so that he almost didn't realize she'd done it. "Just shut up and take the thanks for once, wouldya? If it hadn't been for you and all the fellas you'd sent my way I'd be floating in the East River. Be the hero for once."

"There ain't no heroes in this city, and you know it."

Still, he wouldn't look at her. Lizzie leaned back in the chair. While she watched Spot shift uncomfortably in his seat, she blew out a line of smoke rings then finally said, gesturing with her chin down the bar, "So, tell me: what's a bum like you doing with a doily like that?"

Spot looked. The group was smaller now, some of the women having broken off as they were hailed to the heavily-curtained box seats. But there, with a genuine smile plastered over her face was Lou, pulling from the half-empty whiskey bottle and passing it to the girl at her side as she laughed at a surely crude joke.

"Shit, Lizzie," he said. "Give her a break. She don't live on Fifth Avenue."

Smoke poured between Lizzie's lips as she chuckled. "No—she's got class, but not that much. So what's the bottom line here, Spot? How'd she get a gig as a reporter?"

"Goddamn, Lizzie, ask her yourself. What's it to you, anyway?"

Lizzie's mouth went hard. "You think I do this for fun? You think if I'd had another option a year ago I would've shown up at your docks begging for your help? Hell, if I could get a gig like that, I'd be free." Now she turned and stared at Lou. Quietly, she muttered, "Really free. No more johns. No more grubby hands."

Spot ran his hands through his hair. The movement caught Lizzie's eye and she turned back to the table. "What's in all this for you?"

"None of your damn business, that's what."

"Is she paying you?"

"Someone's gotta."

"Sure do," Lizzie said with a sly smile. "Or who's gonna pay me?"

Spot took the cigarette from Lizzie's fingers. He stared at her as he took a puff. "You gonna help her out or not?"

"You oughta know better, Conlon. I don't promise anything."

Spot leaned his good elbow on the table. "I'm telling you to do it. Tell your fellas to talk to her. It won't hurt you none."

Lizzie gave him a sideways glance. She took her cigarette back and inhaled, the butt glowing red as she took a long drag and leaned back in the chair. She exhaled, then said, "Since when did you get all righteous?"

"Righteous? Shit," Spot said absently, watching wildly dancing couples sweep across the floor beyond. "She's a good kid, Lizzie. She ain't broken, not like us. She's seen the bottom and still thinks shit can change."

"Save me the sob story. What the hell has hope ever gotten anyone?"

"Hope hasn't gotten no one nothing, but a little help has and you're living proof. So just do it, all right? Convince the fellas to talk to her. It'll be more money in your pocket at the end of the day."

Lizzie threw the cigarette to the floor and ground it down with her boot. "Like I said, I make no promises." Glancing beyond Spot, she smirked and whistled. "Well, lookee here."

As Spot turned to look over his shoulder several bodies rushed past. They were pulling Lou onto the dance floor, ushering her through the bodies, and before she disappeared into the fray she turned and gave Spot a wide, bright smile.

"You going after her, or what?" Lizzie said, a smirk creeping back onto her mouth.

"Beat it. I don't dance and you know it."

Lizzie rolled her eyes and flicked her spent cigarette at him. "Your loss, pretty boy."

In a moment, Spot was left alone at the table. His skin began to crawl from thinking too much, so he rose and made his way to the bar and ordered a whiskey double.

He stood there for a time, drinking the sour whiskey and watching the band play. One song blurred into two and then three, and soon he couldn't tell where one ended and the others began. The thrill of the place had worn off and Spot's shoulder ached in the sling, but there was nothing he could do but down the whiskey and order another, hoping it would dull the pain some.

Then, as he finished his second whiskey double, he saw her. As if to bear her through, whirling bodies parted on the dance floor, and Lou appeared, glowing and sticky with sweat. For a moment she searched the room, then saw him at the bar and made her way over, laughing to herself as she stumbled over a chair leg and clumsily righted herself once more.

Drunk.

And though Spot himself wasn't there yet, he appreciated the gentle spectacle. She sank into the bar beside him and sighed, a small smile on her lips.

"You don't dance?" she said.

"Never."

"Not even if I slipped you something?"

He scoffed. "Especially not then."

"That's a shame."

He glanced at her. With bright eyes she watched the dancers move across the dance floor like a school of fish, bodies bouncing against each other but moving like one great being. But all Spot could see was the way Lou lifted her head to see better, the bright curiosity behind her eyes, the warm freedom that bloomed around her wherever she went.

You know what I think? I've got nothing to lose.

Neither did he. But his freedom was marked by anger and bitterness and blood.

And Lou—

The band started wailing, loud and chaotic. The musicians kicked their legs out in wild spasms and played their instruments violently. On the floor the dancers followed suit, crashing into each other and howling with laughter and sweat.

"What's going on?" Lou asked beside him.

And Spot, who had forgotten about midnight at McGlory's, said nothing.

He hadn't been here in far too long. Or maybe he was drunker than he realized. Amidst the clamor of the trumpets and the heavy veil of cigarette smoke, people found their way to one another and kissed.

Celebration was the cause, not romance. They were alive now and no one knew what tomorrow would bring. Over the years Spot had given and received his fair share—from Lizzie more than once—but it hadn't meant much, other than that the night was still young and the bar was still full.

But now, time stopped. Like the second before a fight, the noise around Spot carried on, and the world beyond his eyes slowed. The glass of whiskey in his hand felt stupidly heavy, but he couldn't bring himself to drop it or drink it down. His breath flickered in his chest, and the fist on his slung arm tightened so hard he felt his knuckles pressing against his skin.

Around him, pairs continued to kiss while others broke away, only to turn over their shoulder to kiss the next closest face beside them. While Spot reckoned with his frozen limbs, Lou stepped closer. The smile on her face had changed, no longer simply merry. And behind her whiskey-tired eyes, there was something earnest and true.

He wanted to look away, and couldn't.

So when she put her warm hands on his face and pulled his whiskey-chilled lips down to hers he felt—

Alive.

No one in McGlory's noticed as a nearly-empty glass of whiskey crashed to the floor, shattering into thousands of glittering pieces.

Questions hung between their lips, but there was no time for answers. Too soon, the music slowed, righting itself and rearranging its parts into a discernable rhythm. Spot could feel time begin again, sharp reality seeping back into his brain. An unfamiliar thrum sang through his bones, and his calloused fingertips pulsed to their own brisk rhythm. The clock must have moved, no matter how much he had willed against it.

Lou's lips disentangled from his. Across the dance floor, Lizzie's cackling laughter faded into the general clamor. Lou took a step back, her shoes crushing the glass into the dingy floor. Spot glimpsed the dancers as they resumed their cavorting beyond, his heart shuddering against his ribs at how quickly they were moving out of midnight though it was a mere minute ago.

Lou turned toward the dancers. The moment was slipping away, dwindling now against the smoky light and roaring music. As the thrumming in his chest began to fade, Spot did the only thing he could think to do.

The taste of her whiskey lips still on his tongue, he reached forward, hooked his good arm around Lou's waist, and pulled her back to him.

And this time, he kissed her.


	12. Chapter Twelve

Lou unraveled her fingers from Spot's hair and stepped back, breath caught in her throat. As the ringing in her ears faded, she became aware that the band's music had lost its disorder, had rearranged itself into rhythm and melody once more. Even in the dim light, Lou could see the flush on Spot's cheeks and the way his brow furrowed, then relaxed, then furrowed once more.

Is he drunk?

Though Lou still felt a buzz swimming in her head, she couldn't remember tasting any alcohol on Spot's lips. And he hadn't stumbled, not for an instant—his arm around her had been so sure, so solid. Whether it was the clamor of the music or the whiskey, she still couldn't piece anything back together.

A moment ago Spot's eyes had settled into hers, warm and close, but now she saw that his gaze was uneasy. He swallowed hard and opened his mouth to speak. Lou's fingertips prickled as she waited, anxious to hear what he wanted to say.

But timing was everything, and as he took a breath, a roar ripped through the crowd. Though Lou waited still, watching his face for a sign, she eventually turned to look at what had drawn his attention away.

The crowd on the dance floor had parted and a thrum of excitement ran through the muggy air. Two men stood in the negative space, circling each other and erratically throwing drunken punches that landed only occasionally. Lou nearly smiled as she watched the men stumbling, wild and sloppy with drink.

But in an instant, the tone of the crowd transformed.

It took Lou a moment to identify the rapid glint of a knife as it slashed through the dark air. Someone nearby gasped, and on instinct Lou made to move forward, to get a closer look.

She didn't make it far before she felt Spot's hand grip her arm, his voice low as he said, "Time to go."

"But—"

"Now."

Spot tried to pull her down the length of the bar but it seemed that every warm body in McGlory's was drawn to the center of the dance floor, pushing and pulling Spot and Lou nearer to the fight. With one arm injured and the other holding tight to Lou's hand, Spot couldn't press against the tide of people for long.

"Just hang on," he said low, and they let themselves drift along the current of the crowd toward the fight.

By the time the crowd had stopped its press, the fight had grown—from two original fighters into two opposing bands. The knives had multiplied too, and Lou could see brass knuckles and the butt of a pistol hanging out of a man's pocket. She leaned to the side to get a better look.

Spot growled, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Do you see that?"

"Good god," Spot grumbled. "Are you enjoying this?"

Lou shrugged. "What, a girl can't take a look?'

He cocked an eyebrow. "Who are you kidding? You're memorizing this shit for the papes, not taking a gander."

Lou pursed her lips and said nothing.

Spot shook his head, but Lou saw the amused glint at the corner of his eye. "You're nuts."

But she couldn't help turning back to look at the action in the center of the floor. Fists flew in wild arcs, left and right and underhand. Even above the fray, Lou could see sweat and what she thought was blood spraying through the air. A hit landed, and the crowd threw up noise so loud that if Spot had spoken to her she wouldn't have heard it, no matter how close he was. The woman next to her shrieked—in excitement or fear, Lou couldn't say—and the vibration made Lou's ears ring.

She turned to Spot, but she didn't have to say anything. He merely pulled her between the tightly-knit bodies, shoving disgruntled patrons out of the way and ignoring their frowns and insults.

As they struggled to reach the bar once more, the precinct captain barged through the crowd, hollering and walloping his billy club against nearby skulls.

"Break it up!" he shouted, face bloated and red. "Goddammit, break it up!"

But the crowd didn't hear, or chose not to. They pressed closer, slowing the captain's progress. The captain blew the whistle around his neck and Lou winced at the piercing hiss, but soon the noise dissipated into the humid air. At the center the two groups of men kept fighting, vicious and strong, determined to win as if there were nothing else worthwhile in the world.

Spot lifted Lou onto the bartop with his good arm and his hip. She leaned down to pull him up and they both climbed over and down. As they landed behind the bar, Lou heard a gunshot reverberate throughout the hall.

The screams came shortly after, then the police whistles.

"Shit." Lou saw the word on Spot's lips. Immediately people began to disperse, rushing toward the entrance, the box seats, any place where complete darkness would hide them. A few noticed Lou and Spot behind the bar and began to climb over themselves.

Lou's eyes raked the crowd for the women, but she couldn't see any of them in the bodies nearby. "Come on," Spot shouted.

"But what about—"

He didn't let her finish. He pulled her hard down the back of the bar, away from the entrance where people crowded, hollering and screaming and pushing.

"Where are we going?"

They reached the end of the bar and turned the corner. A heavy curtain hung over a doorway and Spot let go of Lou's hand to push it aside.

"Go on," he said, and waited for her to go ahead while he looked over his shoulder at the chaos behind.

Lou stepped into the dark hallway behind the curtain and halted. The oppressive clamor rose to greater heights in the narrow space, ringing in Lou's ears and making her head spin. The noise only quieted some once Spot dropped the curtain behind him.

"There's a staircase ahead," Spot said. He stood close, and the feel of his breath on her hair made her skin tingle. "To the right."

He put his hand on the small of her back and pressed her forward. Soon she felt her hand brush against a metal stair rail and she grabbed hold and began climbing up. But, when she heard another body coming up behind them, she panicked, the staircase so dark that she couldn't see who or where they were.

"Spot—"

"Keep going."

The shadow drew closer. Lou's heart slammed into a gallop and she held her breath, forcing one foot in front of the other through her fear. Her stomach twisted into tight knots, sure that someone had raised the alarm and now wanted to stop them. But the shadow person merely passed, sprinting ahead and leaving the stairway trembling in their wake.

Lou stared ahead and saw a flash of light as a door opened and swung shut at the top of the stairs. A few more steps and Spot moved around her and reached in the darkness for the door as they stepped onto the landing. More footsteps sounded on the staircase below, and at the sound of them Spot shoved the door open and pulled Lou once more into a dimly lit, narrow hallway.

They could still hear the pounding of feet on the stairway even with the door shut behind them, so they dashed down the hallway, past scratched and battered doors with rusted door knobs.

"Where are we?" Lou wondered aloud, glancing side to side at the dingy tenement doors around her. "Do people live here?"

Spot didn't answer. Whoever had passed them on the stairway had gone ahead long ago and besides the footsteps on the stairway behind, there was no sign of anyone at all, except for the distant cry of a baby and the sound of chaos in the dance hall below.

They stopped at the end of the hallway. "Goddammit, which one is it?" Spot snarled, his eyes moving desperately between the last two doors on either side.

As she watched him flounder, she took a breath and said reassuringly, "I suppose they can't fit us all in the paddywagon—"

Spot whipped around to face her. His eyes were sharp and his teeth gritted, rage rolling off him in waves. Lou bit her lip, and as she stared into his face she saw a deep pleading that made her breath catch in her throat.

"I ain't going back, understand?" he growled.

Quietly, she said, "To the Tombs?"

Spot met her gaze for a moment more, his eyes narrowing dangerously, then he swung around to the doors and took a tight breath. "This one," he said, pulling Lou toward the last door on the left. He dropped her hand and reached into his pocket, pulling out a small knife that he slid between the door and the frame.

"Are you sure about this?"

Spot wrestled with the knife in the door until it finally slid downwards. Above the downstairs din Lou heard a slight clicking noise. In grim silence, Spot put his hand on the knob and pushed the door open into darkness.

Lou hesitated, but Spot moved right in. They left the door open behind them as they stumbled into the apartment, tripped over objects scattered across the dark floor. "There," Spot said in a hushed voice. Lou watched the shadowy outline of his hand point to a window.

"But—"

The window seemed to shine as they stepped into the tiny space someone could call a kitchen. Lou felt a breath of relief come over her.

Then a voice like a train rumbled nearby.

"Shit."

Spot turned and grabbed Lou's shoulders to turn her, too. Lou took a step forward and stumbled on what felt like a broom, making Spot fall into her, which made them both fall forward onto a chair that teetered dangerously towards the floor.

Lumbering footsteps shook the kitchen's thin floor. Spot righted himself and pulled Lou up, then she tossed the chair in the direction of the footsteps in the hope it would slow them down. She groped around in the dark for a few seconds before she found Spot's hand, grabbed it and then dashed toward the still-open door to the hallway.

Spot slammed the door shut behind them and immediately dashed to the apartment door opposite, groaning with relief as he turned the knob and the door opened straightaway.

Lou ran after him, but before she could catch up the door behind opened. She turned and froze, staring at the rough-shaven face that had emerged, red-rimmed eyes boring into her, veins in his neck straining as he screamed across the hallway in a language she could only barely understand.

She choked on her breath. Her mouth hung open and meanwhile her throat closed, tighter and tighter, suffocating whatever air was left in her. Before it could run out completely, Spot pulled her inside the apartment, shut the door and locked it.

For a moment she leaned her back against the door, breathing heavily. But as she heard lumbering footsteps cross the hall she jumped away, just in time for the door behind them to bang repeatedly with ferocious violence. In time they went silent, and a distant door slammed shut.

Lou opened her mouth to say something, but couldn't find the words. While she faltered Spot found a lamp and turned it on.

"You all right?" he said.

Lou bit her lip so hard it bled, but she said nothing.

Spot breathed deeply and said, "Over here."

In a kitchen as small as the one they had just left, Spot flung open the window. "No one lives here?" Lou asked as Spot helped her onto the window's ledge.

He shook his head slowly and said, "Listen, I'm sorry about all that back there."

Lou smiled. "It'll make a hell of an article. If we make it out of here."

For a second Spot grinned and Lou felt a warmth spread through her chest at the sight of it. Then his face went flat, focused, and he ushered her onto the fire escape beyond.

She hadn't realized how hot and sweaty it had been inside McGlory's until the cool night air brushed against her face. Stepping out under glittering stars and wispy clouds, Lou felt as if she had entered a new world.

Until she looked down. People ran haphazardly across and along the street, towards alleys, storefronts, and anywhere else they could find cover. Again, Lou searched the runners for the women, and found nothing.

"Get a move on," Spot muttered behind her. "Someone's coming."

As quickly as they could, they descended the fire escape. Halfway down, Lou started at the sound of shouting and looked to the left. Leaning over the railing of the fire escape opposite was the stubbled man, wearing no shirt as he waved his fist in the dark and shouted at them in German.

Relief frothed in Lou's stomach. It started subtly, then spread from her lungs to her head, and soon she was laughing so giddily that she couldn't breathe. The look of the man raging in the moonlight and the cool air on her face and the whiskey still running through her blood converged in her brain and made it a mess so that she wasn't even aware of the fire escape rattling with another body nearby.

Spot wrapped his good arm around her waist and dragged her down the fire escape, silent against her manic laughter. But as soon as Lou's feet hit the cobblestones the sound died in her throat and the bristled neighbor had disappeared.

But the ringing of footsteps on the fire escape hadn't. "This way," Spot murmured, and together they ran down the street.

They stopped to catch their breath in an alley several blocks away. Spot leaned his forehead against the brick facade and breathed heavily while Lou doubled over, clutching her stomach.

When she had caught her breath she said, "Well, that was fun."

Spot turned his face from the wall to look at her. He wasn't smiling.

Lighten up, she thought, but she knew better than to say it out loud, so she rolled her eyes instead. She ambled nearer to the street and as she made to peer out, a sharp whistle and the hard thwack of a billy club nearby made her start and hurry back into the darkness of the alley.

"Does this happen often?" Lou asked, staring hard at the street.

"The fights?" Lou nodded. "Every damn night."

"They don't get tired of it?"

It took a moment for Spot to answer and when he did his voice was low and strangely deep. "It's all they've got."

In the darkness, Lou frowned, then took a step closer and said, "Are you all right?"

"Fine." He sighed and turned around, leaning his back against the wall. "You?"

Lou nodded.

"Suppose we should get outta here," he said, gazing down the alley's entrance.

As she searched for something to say, Lou couldn't help but think of the kiss. Long silent seconds passed and the longer she looked at his face the more she felt the surrounding buildings pressing in on her, sharpening the city into focus. She searched for clarity in his face, in his mouth.

What is this between us? The words were ready on her lips when he tore his gaze from the street beyond and turned to her. He took a slow step closer, then another, and Lou thought she could see behind his eyes carefully measured words that she held her breath to hear.

Spot opened his mouth, Lou opened hers.

And a woman's scream tore through the air.

They both swung around. The sound reverberated against the brick walls piled high with barrels and crates. Lou took a step toward the pitch-black heart of the alley. Immediately, Spot's hand tightened around her arm.

"What are you doing?" he growled.

"You heard that, didn't you?" she said, brow furrowed. "We've got to help."

"The hell we do," he said. "We've gotta get out of here."

Lou pulled her arm from his grip. She watched his face, remembered his words.

I ain't going back.

"Then go," she said, and took a step into the black.

The scream rang out again. Heart pounding in her ears, Lou took off at a run, following the noise as her only guide.

As she ran, Lou listened for the sounds, and farther down she heard scuffling and grunting, then what sounded like a muffled shout. She stopped to pinpoint where the sounds came from, her heart skipping a beat as something warm pressed against her back.

As she began to whip around Spot hissed, "It's me."

"About time."

"You know where you're going?"

She hushed him and listened. The sounds came again, and Lou took a step forward. The buildings were so close together that no moonlight reached into the alley, and she had to calm her breathing to hear above the pounding in her chest.

"This way," she said, reaching for Spot's hand and pulling him along.

As they neared the source of the noise their footsteps gave them away and the alley went quiet. Just as Lou was about to call out, the sound of a dull thud echoed past her and suddenly a tired voice gasped, "Here!"

Spot and Lou sped forward. A hand must have clamped over the woman's mouth again because they heard only muffled shrieks and the sound of something hard hitting something soft. Then the shrieks stopped, and Lou stopped with them.

"Spot, what—"

He hushed her, his hand on the small of her back the only thing keeping her heart from jumping out of her chest. Suddenly his hand vanished, and Lou searched in the dark for any sign of him, any sound.

After a moment of standing alone, Lou grew desperate and reached out into the darkness, stumbling over the cobblestones into a wall. She ran her hands over the bricks and slowly moved her feet along, startled when her foot hit something soft. She reached down to touch it and as she did, a crack resounded mere feet away.

"Spot?"

She heard groans, the sounds of struggle. Her hand was moving on its own now, reaching down to the softness on the street. Hair, mounds of hair, then skin, and Lou knew with a strange certainty that she had found her mark.

"Are you hurt?" she whispered feverishly to the body under her hands. "Say something!"

Lou heard nothing but the scuffling sounds of boots and fists. No matter where she looked in the dark she couldn't see Spot, couldn't discern him from the general struggle. She moved her hands over the woman and felt something warm and sticky cling to her fingers. As she used all her strength to hoist the woman onto her back, Lou begged the blood to be something else.

As Lou struggled to stand she whispered hoarsely, "Spot? Where are you?"

A crack, a cry. Then a flash and the sound of a gunshot.

"Spot!"

Silence, too long. Lou's breath caught in her throat and she made a choking sound as she scrambled through the darkness, staggering with the woman on her back, towards an enemy she couldn't see. It didn't matter, she—

"Can it, all right?" Still Lou fumbled until finally she crashed into his chest. Then he said, more gently, "I'm all right, I'm all right. We've gotta get the hell out of here."

He started to walk, but she pulled him back. "I've got her."

He said nothing and she could only imagine him peering through the dark to see what the hell she was talking about. "She's unconscious."

"How the hell—"

"Just watch my back, will you?"

Together they reeled through the black toward the alley's entrance. As they neared the street, they stopped beneath the moonlight and Lou leaned the woman against the brick wall.

She looked at the woman, really looked at her. Lou brushed blood-matted hair from her face, taking in her glistening dark skin and the long curled eyelashes. She tilted her head to look at the woman's mouth, and when she saw the familiar curved scar at the corner of her lips, Lou gasped.

Right where the dog bit her—how many years ago?

"Pauline?" The name barely escaped her throat. Lou's heart moved about like a weathervane, pounding one minute and slow with relief the next. Had she been at McGlory's earlier? How had Lou not seen her? She wracked her brain, searching her memory for Pauline's face among the crowd.

"You know her, huh?" Spot said.

Lou nodded, mute.

"That's real cute, but we've gotta get out of here. He's not gonna stay down for long."

"Who was it?"

Spot frowned and rolled his shoulder, thinking. Then he reached into his pant pocket and pulled out a pistol, turning it over in his hand.

"Fuck," he whispered.

"What?"

He lifted his face, and Lou froze when she saw the look in his eyes. "He's the only one of those goons with this gun."

"Who are you talking about?" she hissed.

Again Spot looked down at the gun and she could see his fingers go loose, trying to decide whether to toss or keep it. "The captain."

They stood frozen for a moment, looking at each other, at the gun.

"What now?" Lou said.

Spot frowned. His whole body went tense as he slid the gun into his pocket. "We lay low."

The street outside McGlory's had gone quiet. The sound of yelling and walloping billy clubs had stopped. The quiet sucked the air out of the city and Lou's breath felt heavy in her chest.

Until the woman moaned.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

The ghosts are still here.

They never left. In the dark of the apartment as a sudden storm clapped outside, Spot Conlon worried they never would.

There was a time when crooked hash marks numbered the nights he woke to screams echoing from cells below. The sharp sounds leapt and amplified over wet stone walls until they reached the slab where he lay. Once set-off, the lunatics of the Tombs could scream for hours at a time, stopping only when they grew hoarse or the guards smothered them into silence, stomping them out like an hours-old fire.

If the guards were bored and restless—and they often were—they would roar along the first floor, bellowing at the top of their lungs to frighten the howling lunatics into submission. Sometimes it worked and the prisoners crumpled to the floor in their cells, scooting themselves into a corner away from the shouting guards. But sometimes the guards' bullying woke a fire deep within the forgotten men's souls and set them to frothing and weeping and scratching at their faces. From his cell two stories up, Spot could see the blood dripping down their cheeks.

When he closed his eyes, he could see it still.

What the marks in his cell did not tally were how many nights he had lunged in a weary delirium at the barred door, desperate for something, anything to hold onto.

Often, long after the screams of the night had died away, Spot continued to hold on. Rarely did his cellmate wake from the noise, perpetually drunk from the bottles of whiskey his brother hid in cooked chickens and delivered before dark.

The first thing he had learned in the Tombs was this: booze, drugs, cigarettes—it was all easy to procure. During the day lines of people came in off the street to visit friends and once-loved ones bringing any number of contraband with them.

Days after Spot had first arrived, Red and O'Grady had turned up, bashful it had taken them so long to find their leader. They had brought a half-drunk bottle of Scotch and nothing else, except apologies and eager promises of freedom.

The Scotch didn't last an hour.

Booze or no booze, Spot never slept for long. He listened on those nights until the lunatics' weeping turned to whimpering, until the guards' shouting turned to grim laughter. He listened too as the guards pissed into the cells of sobbing men too tired for this world, but still of it.

The second thing he learned in the Tombs was this: silence was hell.

Nothing good came of silence. Silence preceded a man's walk to the gallows, his last breath as he coughed himself into oblivion alone in his cell, the sound of a bedsheet tied tightly to a pipe.

And so, Spot was grateful for the summer storm, for the rumbling and flashing that interrupted the night's quiet through the kitchen window.

But the ghosts—they hovered, watching.

He woke to the sound of furious clacking. Lifting his head from the kitchen table he rubbed his neck and groaned—sleeping on a solid wooden chair was somehow far worse than the threadbare burlap sack he had used on the hard floor of Store 37.

But he didn't begrudge it. His shoulder still ached and occasionally sent spasms of pain down his arm, but he didn't need to sleep in the brass bed, and frankly, he had never wanted to. It was enough that he was staying in her apartment, injuries tended by her doctor, drinking her coffee—he didn't need to be humiliated by sleeping in her bed.

Especially if she wasn't in it.

How did he get here? Dependent, willingly dependent on someone, someone who knew as little about him as he did about her.

You've got no job and a bum shoulder. That was the deal.

It didn't make him feel any better.

Neck still sore, he stretched and walked toward the living room. He stopped in the doorway. Lou sat behind a typewriter, early morning sun splashed over the side of her face, focused intently only on the paper standing inches before her eyes.

Spot cleared his throat.

Lou stopped typing and looked up. "You look like hell." Her eyes wandered back and forth between the paper and him.

"Yeah? And why don't you?"

She nodded at the typewriter. "Because I'm on a mission. Sleep can wait."

He wondered at that. Mere hours ago, as they had hauled the semi-conscious woman through the streets of Brooklyn, up the tenement's fire escape, and into the apartment, Lou had seemed more spirited than Spot could remember.

Once inside the apartment, they had collapsed onto the kitchen floor. The woman—Pauline, was it?—groaned as they heaved her into the bedroom and onto the brass bed.

Lou looked at Spot. "She needs water."

"What? You're asking me—"

"Down the hall and to the right."

Spot hesitated, rolled his shoulder. Then he muttered, "What about that neighbor—"

"Damn Mrs. Glover to hell," Lou hissed. "She needs water."

Spot narrowed his eyes, slid his tongue over his teeth.

"Please," Lou said more gently, handing him the enamel pan.

He took one last glance at the woman lying unconscious in the bed. Then he left. When he came back, Lou grabbed a glass from the dresser and dipped it into the pan. She held the glass to Pauline's lips, but the woman was still so senseless that the water merely dribbled down the corner of her mouth.

"I'm going to get Doctor Wilkins," Lou said, a deep crease along her forehead.

She rose to leave and Spot grabbed her by the arm. "You ain't leaving me alone with her."

"What are you talking about? Why not?"

"I'll tell you why not: if she wakes up in a strange apartment and sees me—just me—with her she'll scream bloody murder. That's fucking why."

Lou's frown deepened. "Then you go get him."

He rolled his eyes. "Fine," he snarled. "Since it seems I'm in the business of running your errands now anyway."

The doctor answered the door disheveled, his glasses hanging unevenly across his nose. Still, he came along, seeming unsurprised to see the same young man he'd treated only a few days before.

They trudged together up the stairs, the doctor two steps behind. When they entered the bedroom Pauline was sitting up in the bed, her arms wrapped around her knees and her breath coming in reedy gulps. Lou jumped up from her side and rushed to the doctor, and as she began to explain what had happened, Spot left for the kitchen.

He was smoking a cigarette out the window when Lou came in. Sighing, she leaned her head against the cabinets and closed her eyes.

Eyes still closed, she said, "You kissed me."

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. "As I recall, it was you who kissed me."

She turned her head and opened her eyes, looking at him sideways. "Wasn't I supposed to?"

In the past, his mind had gone sharp at moments like this, whether he needed a ready quip of a kick to the knees. But not now. A fog had descended over his eyes, like he didn't quite know where he was or where he was going.

He took a deep drag of the cigarette, taking his time blowing the smoke into the night air. "You always do whatever everyone else does?"

She let out a short laugh. "I was drunk."

"I could tell."

Her face fell, subtly, nearly imperceptibly. At the sight of it Spot felt a twinge in his chest, then relief as his mind cleared, sharp once more.

"Is that so?"

He shrugged and looked her dead in the eye. "That's so."

She looked at him straight back. "Aren't you the gentleman."

The walls pressed in on him, a prickling moving under his skin like just before a fight. His mind focused on his immediate surroundings—the sound of Lou's new silence, the night wind sweeping through the window and over his skin, the red glow of lit tobacco. He turned and threw his cigarette out the window.

"Never said I was. Best you remember that, kid, next time you go getting ideas."

"You're right," he heard her say slowly, "you never said you were."

Now, in the morning light dulled by the spent storm, Lou's voice still rang hollow. Spot wished for something—anger, bitterness, vengeance—but as he stood in the living room doorway she merely carried on typing.

Ambivalence—he decided—was far worse.

"So, who is she?" he said.

"Pauline?" Lou raised her eyes from the typewriter for barely a moment. "We grew up together. She lived down the street. Lives—down the street," she corrected.

"Huh." Spot tapped his shoe on the door frame. He watched a deep frown crease the corner of her eyes, and said, "She was working that night?"

Lou's eyes snapped to him. "Yes."

"You were surprised."

The frown deepened. "I was. I'm not proud of it."

Spot turned his eyes to the dark beyond the window. "People gotta make a living."

"Of course they do," she said abruptly. Then her voice softened, a distant haze glimmered in her eyes. "I know."

Cigarette between his lips, he reached into his pocket, pulled out another, and offered it to Lou. She looked at it, silent, then slowly raised her hand and took it.

"Thank you," she said as he struck a match.

He shrugged, then leaned in to light the cigarette for her. "Relax. It's just a smoke."

"No," she said, loath. "Thank you for what you did. For bringing me to McGlory's, for getting me out of there, for going down that alley, for—"

"All right, all right, I get it."

He didn't like the way her eyes burned into him.

"So, how is she?"

He watched her as she pulled on the cigarette, blowing the smoke to the side. Clearly it wasn't her first, and he wasn't sure what to think of it. The typewriter clanked as the carriage reached the end of the line. "I brought her home."

"What?"

She raised her eyes, impatient. "I said, I brought her home."

"When the hell did you do that? It's dawn."

She pushed the carriage back into place and began typing again. "Some of us don't have all day to lay around."

"Lay around?" He tried to muster up some indignation, but he couldn't. At least she was talking.

She glanced up at him over the page, eyes dark. "Do you mind? I've got work to do."

"Funny," he said, running his tongue over his teeth. "I was just leaving."

He turned into the kitchen and stepped through the window onto the fire escape. The sound of her typing as he left made his mouth go stale.

The roar of Sheepshead reached him before he could even see the track.

It was Saturday morning, and as usual, the races were crowded and loud and garish. From a distance Spot saw suited men with bowler hats milling about the impressive length of the track, sweating in their suits, their well-shined shoes dull under the perpetual dust. In the bleachers, ladies held tightly to their parasols and fanned their flushed faces. And on the track horses flew by, their brown jockeys clinging tightly to the beasts' smooth, hard bodies.

The commotion drowned out the din in Spot's mind. As the crowd erupted into cheers, he peered through the admissions gate to see who had won.

"You coming in, boy?" the man at the gate shouted.

Spot bristled. He narrowed his eyes at the man and spit on the ground, then turned and walked away from the gate.

But not from the races. He was on his own mission, now.

He walked around the arena, away from the admissions gate, away from the grandstand, toward the bleachers on the opposite side. He kept to the shadows of the bleachers as he made his way to the corner of the structure, found the soft spot in the fence, and hoisted himself over.

It was easy for him to blend into this crowd—no hoity-toity business happened on the wrong side of the track. There was no roof to the bleachers on this side, and all around him, sun-baked bodies wiped their foreheads even as they smoked cigars and drank from pocket flasks.

Spot watched race after race as the sun rose higher in the sky. He obliged the men around him who slapped him on the back and drunkenly offered him swigs from their liquor when their pick won. The hours passed slowly, but watching the horses run in long ellipses hypnotized him and made him forget his exhaustion, his hunger—

No, you never said you were.

That he couldn't forget. But the booze and the borrowed cigars helped.

At a break in the races he maneuvered through the crowd, away from the bleachers. Young boys hawked cigarettes and food from baskets around their necks, but he passed them all and walked straight to the stables. He started when a horse whinnied behind him, pressing his back against the stable wall as the stablehand guided the horse to the track.

"You getting jumpy on me, Conlon?"

Spot took a deep breath, turned, and smirked.

"I oughta soak you for that, you louse."

Racetrack Higgins flashed a crooked smile as he ambled closer. The hollows under his eyes were darker, deeper than Spot remembered. Unwittingly he glanced at Race's right hand, lingering too long on the space where three fingers ought to be.

Race noticed. Still grinning, he raised his hand and said, "I've gotta hold my cigars real tight nowadays."

Spot frowned. "I heard about that. You lost them in the line shaft?"

A quick laugh. "Hell if I'm surprised. Those birds of yours always were first class."

"I was sorry to hear about it."

A quiet pause, barely perceptible, then Race shrugged. "Hey, at least I don't gotta work the factories no more. I got right where I needed to be," he said and shifted the reins hanging over his shoulder. "Come on, let's get outta this heat."

Race led them from stable to stable until they reached the farthest building where there was no bustle. Spot heaved in a breath as the heat and stink rocked him back on his heels.

Race smirked and slapped Spot on the back. "You'll get used to it," he said. "Starts smelling like sour beer after a while."

He gestured Spot to sit on a crate near the wall. Race sat opposite, and reached into his own crate and brought out a brown bottle, uncorked it, and passed it to Spot. From the first bitter sip Spot felt the hole in his chest begin to close.

"So, Spotty-boy." Race crossed his legs and leaned back. "How's it hanging? You still at the docks?"

Spot shrugged, drank deeply again, and passed the bottle back. "Sure."

Race barked a laugh. "Years since I saw you last, and that's all you've got to say?"

"What the hell do you want? My life story? You know enough, Higgins."

Race shook his head. "Mysterious as always. Well, let me tell you, there's no better tips a fella can get than working the tracks. The smell don't bother me, the pay's decent and there's always a bottle of booze and a cigar lying around somewhere. What more could a fella want?"

"You've got nothing, Race. You shovel shit and sleep in a fucking stable with a horse and you think you're still King of New York."

Race frowned and drank from the bottle, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "Hell, Conlon, you always had a bad attitude. Lighten up. You've gotta have something good going for you. Where's that kid that came swinging into Manhattan all those years ago?"

"Floating in the East River," Spot grumbled.

Race leaned forward suddenly and put his hand on Spot's shoulder. "Come on, now. Not even the Tombs can kill that."

"You have no idea."

Spot shrugged off Race's hand and glanced around the building. He could feel Race watching him, feel his eyes follow the frown lines on Spot's face. The last thing he wanted to do was talk about the docks, because talking about the docks would lead to talking about the Tombs, which would lead to why he hadn't said a word to his old newsies since. Above all, he didn't want to mix his memories of Race and the strike with his memories of the Tombs. They were separate, two different lives he had lived in the span of one, and he wanted them to stay that way.

"So," Race said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a cigar. "How come you're here to see little old me? What I hear, you don't keep in touch with your newsies no more."

"They ain't my newsies." Spot grabbed the lit cigar from Race's hands and drew on it. "And I came to see you because you don't give me shit—at least you didn't used to."

"Your old lady," Race said with a snicker, taking the cigar back from Spot's mouth. "Tell you what, Spotty boy, you sound like you could use some entertainment. Come on down to Sheepshead one of these days and I'll get you into Coney Island. One of the valets has got a brother who works over at Luna Park, he'll get you in the back way. You ever been to Luna Park?"

Spot scowled. "Why the hell would I go to Luna Park?"

"To lighten up." A shot rang out in the distance and Race stood. "Next round is starting. I gotta get the horse ready for the jockey or he'll have my head."

Just outside the stable door Race stopped. "It's good to see you, Spot. I mean it."

Spot nodded, took one last swig from the dingy brown bottle, and tossed it into the hay. "Win 'em good, Race."

The sun had dropped behind the skyline by the time Spot reached Bed-Stuy. Just outside the tenement he stopped and bought a pack of cigarettes from a young girl with a basket on her hip. He stood alongside the building, smoking and waiting, waiting and smoking. Then, after he had ground what remained of the cigarette into the sidewalk, he climbed the fire escape.

The kitchen window he had left open was now shut. A pang ran through him, then dissipated when he found it was still unlocked. As he lifted the window it screeched loudly against the frame. He hoisted himself into the kitchen, disturbed by the silence he found.

Then he heard voices and went to the doorway.

"Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in."

Joe Starkey sat in the living room, grinning from ear to ear. Spot tore his eyes away to see Lou sitting next to him, staring at Spot with a look he couldn't understand. She had a notebook on her lap and a pencil in her hand and when she saw him they nearly fell to the floor.

She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes and said, "About time you showed up."


End file.
